Health Care in America
Floor Speech
HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA -- (House of Representatives - June 03, 2009)
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kissell). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We are going to take the next 45 minutes to an hour, myself, Mr. Kagen, Mr. Langevin, and a few others that will likely join us over the course of the hour, to talk about a subject that's on the minds of more and more Americans every day, and that is the issue of getting health care for all Americans.
President Obama was swept into office with a mandate to fix what has become an unjustifiably broken health care system here in this country. It costs way too much, outpacing all of our industrialized neighbors by almost twofold. It gets care that, compared to those same nations, ranks pitifully in the middle of the pack. And it has changed the very practice of medicine for far too many physicians who went into their profession for the love of treating people and making them better and now find themselves dedicating more and more of their time filling out paperwork, dealing with red tape, and arguing with insurance companies over whether or not they should get paid for their services.
We can make this health care system better for our society as a whole, for our government as a payer, for the patients who interact with it, and for the providers--the doctors and the nurses and practitioners--who perform miracles every day within that system despite the system.
There are a lot of people who enter this debate from various sides, and we're, frankly, not going to have over the course of this next hour unanimity of opinion on the exact solution to this crisis going forward. What you will hear over the next hour is a group of individuals on the Democratic side of the aisle who are committed not just to reform for reform's sake, not just to a--pardon the pun--Band-Aid fix, but to comprehensive health care reform. We're beyond making little incremental fixes here or there. We've got to strip this thing down and build it back up again. We've got to learn from our mistakes.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, we've heard the American people loud and clear whether it was at the ballot box last November when they voted for a President, a President who made it clear that health care reform and getting coverage to every American was going to be at the top of his priority list, or whether it's every weekend when we go home, when we talk to individuals who are facing the reality of an economy that leaves them one paycheck away, one pink slip away, from losing their health care forever. That number is going up. More and more Americans are afraid that their breadwinners may lose their jobs over the next 6 months to a year. They realize that what comes along with that is the risk of having their entire lives turned over. Half of the bankruptcies in this country are not due to irresponsible spending decisions or due to houses that they bought that cost too much or due to a couple too many plasma TVs in the basement.
No, it's medical costs. It's an unforeseen illness visited upon a family who didn't have the resources to pay for it. Half of the bankruptcies in this country are due to people who got sick but who didn't have the means to pay for it. Half of the bankruptcies are due to the people who played by all of the rules and who did everything we asked them to do but who just got sick.
Now, in the richest country in the world, there is no justification for the fact that somebody who has the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer or with an expensive illness has to lose everything--his house and his car--just because his fortune was a little bit different than someone else's fortune. There is no justification for the fact that millions of little kids in this country are going to bed, sick at night, just because their parents can't afford to get them to doctors. In this country, that can't be all right. People have come to the conclusion that this is the time--this year, right now, this summer, this fall--when we finally will wake up and will fix this thing for good.
You're going to hear from a lot of us as to our ideas on how we should address this crisis. We're going to talk today about the role of consumers in this debate, whereby we can make our health care customers better purchasers of health care if we give them the right information and so that we can empower them in a new, reformed health care market.
You're going to hear about the role of the Federal Government in this reform and, as part of that new purchasing power that we can give to individuals, that we can give them the option to buy the same health care that I have and that Mr. Langevin may have and that others in this Chamber may have. I know Mr. Kagen doesn't take the Federal employees' health care plan, but it doesn't seem like it's so revolutionary that we should not allow regular, everyday Americans to have the same kind of health care that Members of Congress have.
We're going to talk about the role of people to have choices between public insurance and private insurance. We're going to talk about reforming the way that medicine is practiced so that physicians can get back to spending their time with patients rather than with filling out paperwork and with hiring more and more people to argue over whether they will get paid or not.
We're going to talk about how we make this reform centered around improving quality. It still doesn't make sense that we spend 70 percent of our gross domestic product on health care, and yet we have infection rates, life expectancy numbers and infant mortality rates that should leave us pretty embarrassed given the amount of money that we're spending. So I'm excited to be here on the floor for the next hour or so to talk about these things.
I know Mr. Langevin has joined us here on the floor. I would be thrilled to turn it over in just a second to Mr. Kagen to give a couple of introductory remarks, and then I will turn it over to Mr. Langevin.
So I'm glad to have you join us here, Mr. Kagen.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Dr. KAGEN.
Dr. KAGEN has been such a great voice on this. He highlights a growing issue that, I think, we can get bipartisan agreement on, which is that transparency of price, whether it be insurance products or physicians, is going to be so important, and empowering consumers to make these decisions can be part and parcel of what gets those costs down.
With that, I am very happy to have my good friend from Rhode Island join us today. I would yield to him.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island. You have been such a leader in this Congress for years on the issue of health care reform, especially, as the world knows, on the issue of stem cell investment. We know that one of the ways that we're going to get savings ultimately is by stimulating the next round of breakthrough treatments and cures that are going to save lives but also save money.
With that, we'll turn to my very good friend and classmate from Florida (Mr. Klein) for some wise sage words.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Listening to the gentleman from Florida, I'm reminded--you were down here with us the last time we were doing this. I got an e-mail not long after from a family member who comes from the other side, both the partisan and ideological side of the aisle. And he said, you know, be careful. You keep on talking about this. You know, it makes a lot more sense to me. I am struck by the principles that you have laid out because I think that a lot of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle, either here or out in the world, aren't going to find a lot of disagreement with a lot of things that we're talking about this system doing. I just think it's important for our constituents and for the American people out there to really do a little investigation when they hear the pundits on TV or the leaders of the Republican Party talking about President Obama and socialized medicine or the Democrats' plan for a government takeover because all you've got to do is scratch the surface there, and you will find out that really what we're talking about is some pretty important and I think broadly agreed upon reform and that the bogeyman and the straw man that gets thrown out there in terms of terminology that doesn't have any place in this debate can easily distract you from what is really a pretty unifying debate that's starting to happen here. I appreciate your words.
One of the things you mentioned was the importance of getting at this issue of pre-existing conditions. Representative Courtney has been a great leader, offering his own legislation on that issue. I am glad to yield to the gentleman from Connecticut
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank you, Mr. Courtney.
There is, and you can feel it, I hope, from the folks that are on the floor today, an enthusiasm and an optimism that we have that I don't think we have felt in this House for a long time. The forces are aligned in a way that they have not been in a long time to get this effort done. And I think your point about people wanting to stand up the public health care system as an example of what needs to remain and then also tear it down I think is a really good comment. I'm reminded of a point made by a political columnist who talked about one of the statistics that is very often used by the side backing up the status quo, which is that in the Canadian health care system, you have to wait weeks, if not months, for a hip replacement surgery, and here in the United States you can get it pretty immediately. What they fail to point out is that 70 percent of hip replacement surgeries in the United States are paid for by Medicare, are paid for by a government-run health care system. And so we, through our public payment system, already do a pretty good job of getting people the care that they need. The fact is they spend a lot less money on health care in Canada than we do here. And we are not even talking about cutting back the amount of money we are spending. We are simply talking about trying to restrain the rate of growth. By reordering the money that we already have in the most expensive health care system in the world, we are going to be able to get good care. We will have short waiting times and access to all the people that don't have it.
So with that, I'm so glad that Representative Schwartz has joined us on the floor. Whether it is standing up for primary care physicians or being a leader in this Congress on the issue of health care IT, I'm so glad to have you joining us here.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You know, Mr. Kagen, the discrimination finds itself in a lot of different corners. It's not just you, as an individual, who may not be able to get that insurance. But it prevents you from going out and getting employed or reemployed, because that discrimination is against you individually, but also against your employer, that if you have a small employer who's looking to go out and get health care for his five or six employees, that insurance could potentially be double for your pool of five or six employees if one of them happens to have a preexisting condition.
So, you know, it's really a triple whammy for somebody that gets sick and has expensive care: one, you have to deal with the limitations on yourself through that disease; two, you may not be able to get insurance to cover it. You may have to pay for it out of your pocket; and three, you may not even be able to be employed because employers today are going to say, Forget it. Even though that guy might be the perfect person for this job, I might need that person to fill that slot. It's going to break my bank if I have to put that person on the insurance rolls. And that's another reason why we have to make sure that the elimination of preexisting discrimination is part of this bill.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And, Mr. Klein, when you talk about it like that, it is common sense. When you talk to a small business out there and you tell them, Listen, what do you think about having the option, up to you, to purchase into a plan that is run or administered by the State of Florida? The State of Connecticut, we're looking at doing the same thing, or the Federal Government. If it costs you less, you know, people are going to raise their hands by the droves because you're giving them more choice. Right now they may be, you know, if you're in some States in this Nation and you are looking to purchase an individual policy or a group policy, you don't have a lot of choice out there. It's Blue Cross/Blue Shield or--
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Would the gentleman yield for 1 second?
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Of course.
Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I want to make it perfectly clear, if I didn't make this, when I say State of Florida or Federal Government, the State of Florida doesn't own an insurance company. It could be Blue Cross or United, any combination of private companies. So it's the Federal Government through our Blue Cross or whatever it may be. It's private companies offering the insurance. But the beauty, of course, is the spreading of the risk.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And giving people choice. I mean, I think that this really gets back to the fact that if consumers--and Mr. Kagen was talking about this at the beginning. If consumers know what they're buying, if they can really compare the cost of A to B, and as Ms. Schwartz said, they know the terms of what they're buying, they're going to make smart choices.
And many of us here in Congress who would like for individuals to simply have the option to buy into even the plan that as Federal employees and Members of Congress we have the benefit of getting, we want them to have the option of doing that. If it costs less in their particular region of the country, great, they'll buy it. If it costs more somewhere else then maybe they won't. But no subsidy from taxpayers, no check from the general treasury, just the cost of providing that plan.
And the fact is that the plan that is run or sponsored by the Federal Government, it might be cheaper for people because maybe it doesn't have the same profit motive that the private insurers have. Maybe it's found a way to get administrative or marketing costs down. Maybe it doesn't have to return money to shareholders like private plans do.
But all we think is that individuals and businesses out there should have that choice, like I have the choice to buy private health care in the market or join the Federal employees health care plan.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Kagen, as a closing comment I will just say that, as much agreement as we've had over the last hour, there's going to be disagreement. There are going to be people that try to stand in the way of this change happening. And there's a memo circulated by a Newt Gingrich pollster going around Washington now and around the circles that want to stop reform from happening, and it sort of lays out the case for how you can stop health care reform. But it's interesting because one of the underlying points of that memo, based on the polling that this pollster had done around the country, was that this year you can't be for nothing. This year you have to be for something.
Now, he undergoes a very cynical analysis of how, in the end, you stop reform from happening. But the message, even through this conservative Republican pollster, is clear: People want change. And I think they're going to get it this year.
I thank the Speaker for giving us this time, and we yield back our balance.
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