Health Care Reform
Floor Speech
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Mr. FLEMING. Well, thank you. And I want to thank my friend, of course, from Missouri for having this hour discussion, very important discussion, coming right at the heels of our classmates from the other side of the aisle speaking on the same subject, but with a different opinion.
I also thank my fellow Republican classmate, Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania as well for his discussion.
Well, let me just point out that, you know, you don't have to be detailed in the science to understand one empirical fact, and that is, this globe has warmed and cooled several times in its life before there was the first emission of fossil fuels.
So, that being said, we already have proof positive that the Earth can warm under its own circumstances and its own environment and its own test tube, if you will. And you just mentioned sunspots and other activities. There are many things that go into the global warming effect and global cooling effect.
And as you say, now that we're not able to accurately actually predict that the globe is warming, now the whole issue is changing to climate change, so that whatever happens different than what it is at this moment can somehow be blamed.
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Mr. FLEMING. Also, it was very interesting that the discussion hinged somewhat on the fact that this investment creates more jobs and that it creates revenue down the line. If you listen closely to the discussion, what you hear is really good old-fashioned subsidies. That is, whenever the government is subsidizing forms of energy that are not cost-effective at this point and whenever the technologies are not there, what we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that goes into what I would call artificial, or papier mache jobs, so-called ``green jobs.'' We'll learn from the Spanish experiment that has been going on now for 10 years that, for 2.2 jobs that are lost, there is only one so-called ``green job'' gained. That job 90 percent of the time is in implementation and construction. It is not a continuous job.
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Mr. FLEMING. Well, just to extend that a little further, where are these jobs going?
It turns out that some of the Spanish jobs have come to America because we understand that the net effect of tax, or cap-and-trade, or cap-and-tax as we call it, is that there is a higher cost to produce goods for manufacturing. So as a result, for someone who owns a factory or a company that perhaps owns a factory, he has to find the most cost-effective location for that factory. Otherwise, he can't compete in the worldwide economy. We know today that this is, indeed, a worldwide economy. We can't get away from that fact.
Just today, a Chinese company bought Hummer--a portion of General Motors. So we know that to be true. Well, we actually have received a dividend from Spain going down this road. We've actually had companies coming to the U.S., and we've actually gained jobs as a result of Spain's having gone down this cap-and-trade boondoggle.
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Mr. FLEMING. Well, I thank the gentleman. I think that really the extension of what you just said is what is the real agenda behind this, and I think that we've recognized in the last few years that the American taxpayer has had enough. They don't want to pay any more taxes. Americans feel like they pay enough on the city level, county level, State and Federal level, and I think that our more liberal friends, our tax friendly friends, have realized this, and now they're coming up with schemes to disguise taxes.
And I think Congressman Dingell said it better than anybody in this Chamber--and of course, he's a Democrat--that this is a tax, a very big tax, and I think that really strikes to the heart of what the purpose of this is. Someone a moment ago made reference to the fact that we're going to need at least $1.2 trillion if we go forward with a single-payer, comprehensive health care system, Medicare for all, if you will. And I think that those who support that are scrambling around to find a tax that can be defined as something not a tax, and I think they've got this cap-and-tax program squarely in their sights.
Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming for a moment here, just to support what you're saying, this is kind of interesting. This is a Gallup poll about how do different people that are concerned with the environment, how do they rank global warming as compared to other kinds of environmental issues.
And this is March 2008 and March 2009. You can see both of these charts. It hasn't changed that much over a year, but the thing that was the most important to people in terms of environmental was the pollution of drinking water. That was their number one thing, and then they wanted water pollution, was also eighty-something percent, very important to people in terms of environmental concerns. All the way down, all the way over here to the smaller side, global warming is the last one, and yet that's all we've been doing for a month is global warming, and it suggests that maybe global warming isn't the real issue. Maybe that's just the horse that's supposed to pull a big fat tax increase. That's what we're starting to see here, and I yield to my friend from Georgia.
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Mr. FLEMING. I wanted to tone down on the debate a little bit more.
Again, we heard the 30-something Group Democrats talking about the debate earlier, and one said something very interesting. It really caught my ear. He said that the debate is basically Democrats want health care reform, Republicans do not want health care reform.
Now, I have spoken on this floor, as you know, Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Roe as well, and I've heard you speak many times; many Members of our conference have spoken; I've spoken a number of times throughout the district. I've listened to everyone from Speaker Gingrich to many others. I have yet to hear one Republican say that he is against health care reform.
So I want to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the only way we're ever going to solve our health care problems--which make up about 20 percent of our economy--we must have an honest debate. And framing the other side into a position that really doesn't exist is not going to get us there. In fact, I would say that we really agree, from what I can understand, on 90 percent of the discussion.
We all agree that we should do away with pre-existing illness; we all agree that we should have portability; we all agree there should be a hundred percent access to care; we all agree that we should lower the cost of care. I can draw you a great list. There is really, when you get down to it, only one thing we disagree with, and that is we feel that a private system, private industry--even if it's paid for by the Federal Government--in many cases does a much better job in terms of quality of care and customer service and a much better job of controlling costs.
This is proven time after time.
Compare our economy with a socialistic economy and you see every time that we provide much better products and services and at a much better price than those countries do.
So, really, the only disagreement is who is actually controlling the care. And, of course, I submit to you that a government-run system is a real problem. And I will tell you where I learned this.
When I was in the Navy as a physician, I noticed in the first year that the commanding officer of the hospital sent out a call and said if there is--this is budget time of the year--and if there is anything that you think we could ever want in this hospital, wink wink--meaning, think of something; dream of things--put it on a list, because if we don't preserve that budget the way it is, then our budget will be cut next year. And that, my friend, is the way government works. If you don't force it into the budget, if you don't make sure and protect your territory, it won't be there next year. Somebody will cut into it. And that's really the way government works.
And I will give you an example, a real-life example of how we will never be able to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse from our health care system if it's run by the government.
Think about this: we have to throw out a wide net, which is very expensive. We may capture a few offenders out there. Because it would have to be a criminal act, we would have to prove that they really did it on purpose; and then at the end of the day we would have to prosecute them with a lot of dollars; and then we may get one person, and we may get a few dollars. That's the way you get rid of fraud and abuse in a government system.
In a private system, much different. You have a physician or some other provider in a health care organization that's privately run, and if his practices are not the best practice and he's not practicing in a cost-effective way, that shows up on a graph; and often, of course, you go to that provider and you reeducate, and you have him work with colleagues, and you get him back to the protocols. And if that doesn't work, then you fire him. Easy problem to solve. It doesn't require all of that--there is no crime involved. So you can work in the most effective way possible.
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Mr. FLEMING. I appreciate your yielding. I just wanted to take a moment to follow up on what you said and Mr. Rohrabacher.
We have 47 million uninsured, 10 million of course are illegal aliens. And of course that is a solvable problem by only allowing legal aliens and requiring them to pay taxes and insurance like anyone else, and those who are here illegally should not be here. So that's not really a health care problem, at least primarily, that is an immigration problem.
We also have, as you point out, at least half that 47 million who are insurable people, and very cost effectively, but they choose not to. That really hurts the risk pool, and we should do things to incentivize them.
The real problem is the 10 or 15 million people who are either business owners or they work for small businesses and they can't get cost-effective insurance. And they're the ones that delay care, they're the ones that don't go to their primary doctor, they're the ones that end up going to the emergency room, getting care at a time when the outcomes are the worst and the cost is the highest.
So when you think about it--and polls show that 75 percent of people are happy with what they have, whether it's Medicare or Medicaid, private insurance--it's that 25 percent that can't get affordable care. That's where the problem is, and that's where the focus needs to be. And if we do that, we get cost-effective coverage for them--and there are many ways of doing this, and we
would have to get into ways to determine that--we would really have this problem under much better control. But if we, on the other hand, blow this thing out with a single-payer system, we are going to have exploding budgets as far as the eye can see, and I don't see any end to that. I thank you, and I yield back.
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