The Progressive Message

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Actually, I was a community organizer from Chicago.

Mr. ELLISON. This public option, Congresswoman Schakowsky, do you have any views on it you would like to share before you launch into some prepared remarks you might have?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. No. I have had people come into my offices--I'm sure you have too--day in and day out and talk about how they're so scared. They can't get the health care they need. They have a child with a disability or a spouse who's lost his job and lost his health care. And also people come in and say, you know, I'm 63 years old. I hope I can live another 2 years so I can get Medicare, a government-provided health care for our seniors and for persons with disabilities.

We know that Medicare is one of the most successful programs that we have had. It's something that passed in 1965 and lifted the burden of health care costs off of the most vulnerable people, our elderly and persons with disabilities. This is something that I think many young people are jealous of, wish they had this government-provided health care program that is really a universal program for people over 65 and persons with disabilities.

Well, now we have an opportunity, something I have been working and waiting for all of my adult life, that we're going to have a health care program for all Americans. And what is it going to look like?

It's going to give Americans a choice. If they like what they have, they can keep it. Nobody has to worry about anything being taken away from them that they like. But if they don't want to go back to a private insurance company and want something that we know is reliable because we have done it with Medicare and the Veterans' Administration, they can choose a public health insurance option.

The good news about that is not only will it be there to provide the package of benefits that they want, but it's also going to be something that's really going to save money and make the private insurance industry have to compete with that and make them even better.

Let me just read from a letter that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, from my home State, a former community organizer, sent yesterday to the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, MAX BAUCUS, and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator EDWARD KENNEDY.

He wrote, ``I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.''

The other thing he could have said is that it's also going to save us money by helping to reduce the costs all around for health care. In fact, there's been estimates that over 10 years about $3 trillion can be saved because there will be this choice of this health care option. And it is about time that the United States joined the rest of the industrial world and said, Yes, our people are going to get the health care they need, that it's going to be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.

Let me just tell a couple of stories before I yield back, quick ones. The other day, a friend of mine proudly showed me a picture of her daughter that just had a baby in the hospital, a darling picture of mother and baby and mom holding the baby in one arm and a cell phone in the other.

I said, Isn't that adorable? She must be calling friends and family and telling about the birth of this beautiful baby. And my friend said, Oh, no. She was on the phone with her insurance company right after the birth of the baby to make sure that things are covered.

You know, there are lots of insurance policies, private insurance policies, that don't cover maternity care. People sometimes aren't aware of that until they have a baby.

The other is I met a farmer about a month ago who told me he and his family had a $10,000 dollar deductible policy. Now, this man is included when we count who is insured in the United States of America, but the truth of the matter is this family isn't insured for most things. Unless something horrible happens, a terrible, catastrophic accident on the farm, for everyday health care they are absolutely uninsured, paying out-of-pocket costs.

So, Congresswoman Hirono, you talked about the 47 million uninsured. Over half of all Americans last year reported that they had to forego or postpone some health procedure or prescription drug that they needed. And so we know it goes way beyond those who are uninsured into most Americans.

And now I got a new report today; 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies are due to health costs, and 75 percent of those people have insurance, so-called. That is, until they get sick.

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Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlelady for yielding back.

Let me open the floor back up to Congresswoman Schakowsky. If you don't mind, I just want to pose to you a question. We have a Web site called www.progressivecongress.org. These are folks who want to talk to us, right? They posed a question. The question was: Doesn't employer-funded health care help to make American business less competitive globally?

Would you like to respond to this question?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Absolutely.

If you think about the cost of an automobile, which a lot of people do think about--and we certainly want to encourage people to buy American cars, but there is now more cost for health care than there is for the steel in that car. That's how much it is.

Now, when you want to sell your cars around the world and be competitive and when you're competing against countries in which they have a national health care system and where they control their costs of health care, then it's pretty hard to do when employers are facing these double-digit rising costs in health insurance every year for their employees, those employers who are good enough to provide it or who have negotiated with their workers to provide health care benefits.

So, clearly, we have to find a way to get these health care costs under control. One of the best ways to do that is to have an efficient and quality public plan, and that's one of the reasons it's so important. Not only is the quality going to be great, but there will be cost-effectiveness.

I see you've got a chart about the administrative costs of health care. What we know is that, of all of these public plans that we have--Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration--the administrative costs are very low compared to the private insurance companies.

As a progressive and as a community organizer--and still having that mindset--one of the things that we do as progressives is to engage grass-roots support.

Mr. ELLISON. Yes.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. That is one of the great things about our Web site, too, is that they can talk directly to us.

Let's face it: as we push for comprehensive health care for all Americans, the people who are profiting from the system as it is are going to be out there pushing against us. Mainly, we're going to find that the insurance industry is fighting tooth and nail in having to compete against a public plan. They're out there now and are saying that it's unfair and that it's not right that they should have to compete. Come on. They have had the market to themselves for all of these years, and here we are right now with a crisis in our country in health care.

When people think about the economy, lots of times what they're thinking about is health care. If they lose their jobs, what are they thinking about? Health care. If they had employer plans, they don't have them now. So what we have to do is organize. We have to mobilize. We have to have people out there demanding the kind of plan that's going to help their families, that makes sure that they can get the preventative care that they need and that they can take their kids to the doctor. They don't have to go to an emergency room and wait until the last minute until there is a really serious illness before they get any kind of help.

So I think one of the things that the Progressive Caucus can do is to go out and help mobilize people around the country to get behind a plan that does have a robust public health insurance option in it, too, because without that, you'd better believe that we're going to see the lobbyists from the insurance companies and probably from the pharmaceutical companies, like on the Medicare part D fiasco. So we want to create a partnership in the Progressive Caucus with Americans who want real change in health care.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. You know, we're still hearing those same arguments against the public health insurance option. They're saying: Do you want the government standing between you and your doctor? Do you want the government telling you when you can go to the doctor?

That's just baloney.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, they're lies.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. It's absolutely baloney.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me just say one thing.

Senator Whitehouse said that this is not a Harry and Louise moment; this is a Thelma and Louise moment. You'll remember in the movie that they were driving toward a cliff. Actually, as the President pointed out when he said it, they fell off the cliff . We don't want to drive off a cliff, but that's where we're heading right now in this country with health care. The kind of plan that gives the choice to Americans and that allows all Americans to be covered will keep us from falling off the cliff and more. It will make our society much more healthy.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I don't know the exact number. I am not going to make a guess. But I think it's overwhelming that people feel that the government needs to be a player here in providing health care.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I was on FOX News not too long ago, and they said, Well, how do you know that the government is going to be able to really provide health care and it's not going to just be another big expensive bureaucracy? I said, Well, you know, we don't have to guess about it. We can just take a look at the record of the provision of health care. It's not just the low overhead cost. You go into a room of older Americans, 65 and older--and I am proud now to have my Medicare card. I just got it last week--and you say, Republicans or Democrats, do you think that we should just get rid of Medicare and send you out into the private market--actually, that's what we did with the prescription drug program--and there isn't going to be a person in that room who would support that kind of idea. I mean, people are longing to get old enough, hoping to make it until they get on Medicare because it really is a very effective program. Could it be better? It could be even better. We could have a Medicare prescription drug plan, and that would be a whole lot better than a private plan.

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Ms. WOOLSEY. One of the things we are going to hear, and we're already hearing is, Well, we can't make the insurance companies compete with a public plan. It won't be fair to the insurance companies. Well, excuse me. The insurance companies have a huge marketing budget. They have an overhead that's so much more than the public Medicare program.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I've heard their CEOs get paid pretty well, too.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Oh, and their CEOs get paid so much. If they can't compete with a public plan, oh, too bad. They'll either, you know, plus up and get better and only pay their CEOs so much or more people will go on the public plan. And if we have a good public plan, over the years--and I don't know how long it will be--it can lead to a single universal coverage.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. What we're going to have is an exchange that will allow for all these different choices for Americans. But let's face it, even the private companies now are going to have to play by different rules. For example, pre-existing conditions are not going to be a reason to exclude anyone on public or private plans any longer. There will be some defined benefits that have to be covered so you don't find out when you get sick that, Uh-oh, this wasn't covered, and we thought it was.

Congresswoman Hirono, you talked about transparency and all of this whole industry of health care, which it really is in this country now, is going to be much more family-friendly, people-friendly, where you can understand actually what you're getting, and then you can decide what you want.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Actually, when you ask the American people if you want either all private or all public or a choice of the two, the overwhelming response is that people want to have the choice of a private or a public. And so what we're doing now is building on what people feel comfortable with, and we certainly don't want to have people worrying that they're going to lose something that they feel pretty good about right now. So I think that the notion of having this competition between the two is the kind of plan that can move us forward to get everyone covered right now in the United States of America. We'll see how this multiplicity of choices actually evolves or turns out, or maybe it will be the thing that can last and be successful in providing all Americans with health insurance. But we're not in the business of scaring people that they're going to lose something that they find really works for them. Instead, we're in the business of giving people rational, good, quality choices.

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Mr. ELLISON. Here is an important question people have. Why can't the public have the same insurance that Members of Congress have? And 953 people wanted to know that.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Actually, that is exactly what we are talking about, making sure that everybody has a plan at least as good as the Members of Congress. It can be even better. Our Federal employee benefit plan, we have a choice of only private insurance companies that we can pick from. I think maybe people think that we have--and I'm certainly not complaining. We can pick a good plan, but it is not like Cadillac insurance. We pick among a number of different insurance policies, some better, some that provide less coverage, depending on how much you want to spend.

But what we will give people is something as good as Congress gets, and I think better, if there is this choice of a public option.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me just say, first of all, I don't know what a catastrophe smells like. But I think a lot of people out there are getting that whiff of what a wreckage the current so-called--we don't really have a health care system. It is kind of a hodgepodge.

I did want to say, talking about even our Federal plan, between 2007 and 2008, 14 different insurance plans dropped out of the Federal employees plan. And so thousands of Federal employees who have a plan like we do had to look for new coverage. And so when you have got a public option, it is going to be there. It is not going to go out of business and you have to search around for something to replace it.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Because for senior care, when HMOs took on senior care, Medicare Advantage, et cetera, I went to one of my providers in my district, and they were telling me about this wonderful plan that was very good. And I said, Well, what are you going to do when people start using it? And they looked at me like I was just a nut on Earth. And guess what? In 2 1/2 years, when seniors started using the plan that they had purchased, this group went out of business, and those seniors had to find someplace else in the district because people were using the plan.

Mr. ELLISON. Well, if the gentlelady yields back, it is a lot easier to make money when you're just collecting the money as opposed to when you actually have to pay it out.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. There are a lot of people who, quite correctly, feel as if health insurance is for the healthy, that if you get sick, forget it. It is not always there for you. We all know that.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. You know, we've heard horror stories for years about how insurance companies hire people who are essentially told, at least on the first ask, just to deny the procedure, to just say no. And there was, I remember a very brave doctor who ended up working for an insurance company and denying a procedure for somebody who actually died. And she came to cleanse her soul, to essentially apologize; left that company with enormous amounts of guilt, and said that that's how the business operated.

And what we're trying to create is a health system, a health care system, not one that is designed to make anybody a profit. It's to keep people healthy. And that's what I've said to an insurance company that said, well, you know, how are we going to compete?

I said, look, the object of this policy discussion is to figure out how are we going to provide health care to Americans. The goal, you know, if companies can make money doing that and working within the system that we prescribe, God bless them. That's what we're heading toward right now. But the goal is not to figure out how to maintain their high profits when it's done at the expense of the health care of millions and millions of Americans. That's the bottom line.

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