Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (Senate - July 13, 2009)

Mr. THUNE. I think that sort of segues into the other big issue, the big epic battles we are going to face in the Congress, and that is what to do to reform our health care system so that we can make the cost more affordable for American families and consumers. I don't think anybody argues that we don't need to reform our health care system; that there aren't things we can do better, more efficiently, more cost effectively.

I certainly would not for a minute suggest--as some have suggested about Republicans--that Republicans in the Senate don't want to do anything. We all believe we need to do something. We all believe there is much that can be done that will help improve coverage and lower costs for people in this country. But it can be done in a way that doesn't turn everything over--the keys of the health care system--to the Federal Government.

Much of what we are seeing right now in terms of the plans that are moving through the Congress is that the House of Representatives will pass a bill, perhaps first, which will come over to the Senate. What is being debated--at least at the committee level in the Senate--consists of what they call a public plan option which, in effect, is a government plan. It is a--I would characterize it--government takeover of the health care system in this country because when the government goes into competition with the private sector, I think it will be very difficult for the private sector to compete.

There are many, obviously, already competing plans out there. In fact, George Will noted there are 1,300 entities offering health care plans in this country. Another one isn't going to change that. But the larger problem we have when the Federal Government gets into competition with private business is that the Federal Government becomes not a competitor but a predator. I think the government plan is not going to compete with the private market, but rather it will destroy the private market. A lot of studies bear that out.

If you look at the independent estimates--and in fact the Lewin Group studied this very carefully--they suggest that nearly 6 out of 10 Americans with private coverage, or about 118 million Americans, would lose their current health care coverage and be forced into a government-run health care plan. In fact, John Shields of the Lewin Group said:

If we created this public plan which is priced so much lower than private insurance, that will draw a lot of people in. Then you will wake up one morning and say: Wow, there is only one payer.

Essentially, what would happen, Mr. President, in my view, is we would see the private companies that are offering insurance, or small businesses that are offering coverage to their employees who would say: I can't compete with the Federal Government. I am just going to have all my employees move over into the government-run program. So that essentially, by default, we would see this government takeover of our health care system, and the government plan would become the plan in the country. Eventually, over time, I would argue, it would evolve into a single-payer system.

We are talking about one-sixth of the American economy. Certainly there are shortcomings in our current way of doing things. When we spend 17 percent or one-sixth of our entire GDP on health care, the assumption is that we are not spending enough money on health care. It is probably that we are not spending it wisely enough or not spending it smarter. We have lots of ideas about how to spend smarter that don't involve putting another $1 trillion or $2 trillion in tax burden on Americans in order to pay for this new system or, perhaps even worse yet, borrowing it from future generations, which is what we have been doing routinely around here for the past several months to fund many of these new initiatives. But those are both bad solutions.

A $1 trillion tax or upwards of that, depending on which estimate we look at, up to $2 trillion in additional cost for the plan that is being proposed by Democrats in the House and the Senate--we have to finance it somehow. It is going to be paid for. It is either going to be paid for in the form of higher taxes on the American economy or borrowing from future generations, neither of which, in my view, is an option we ought to pursue.

On the other hand, we ought to look at how we can make the current system--the 17 percent of our economy or the $2.5 trillion we spend annually on health care--more efficient and more effective. How can we emphasize wellness? How can we emphasize prevention? How can we allow individuals and small businesses to join larger groups to get the benefit of group purchasing power and buying in volume? How can we create competition by allowing people to buy across State lines? How do we get the cost of defensive medicine down by reforming our medical malpractice laws so the doctors aren't in fear of being sued or in fear of liability, overutilizing and therefore practicing defensive medicine, which has been suggested by the Health and Human Services Department in a study they did in 2003.

If we put it in today's dollars, it suggests we could save about $180 billion a year in health care costs by doing something about medical malpractice reform.

So these are all things that we are for. We have lots of ideas about how to improve health care in this country or improve at least the delivery of health care and drive down the cost of health care but do it in a way that doesn't impede upon that important relationship between a physician and a patient; in a way that prevents the government from imposing itself into that situation and the government then making a decision about which procedures are going to be covered, how much is going to be paid for each procedure, and essentially becoming the decider when it comes to health care in this country.

We think the decisions that are made with respect to people's health care ought to be made by patients, by providers, and not having the government dictating and getting in the way of that basic fundamental relationship.

The CBO has said about the Kennedy-Dodd bill, which is the only one we know of right now that is moving its way through the committee process and that is currently being marked up, the government plan was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. But how, then, is the government going to offer any benefit?

The government plan is going to be, in my view, redundant to what is already out there unless it comes in and tries to undercut private insurance,
which would put private insurance options out of business and force, as I said before, many small businesses offering coverage to push those employees into the government-run program.

So, Mr. President, these are both, just as I said before, in terms of size, scope, scale, and magnitude, enormous issues in terms of our domestic economy, and we shouldn't be hurrying these issues through. There is some suggestion that the health care bill, as it comes over from the House, might be returned to the floor of the Senate, put on the floor under rule XIV, and an attempt made to get it passed before the August recess. That is not the way to conduct the business of the Senate. That is not the way to deal with one-sixth of the American economy. It is not the way, certainly, to deal with something as complex as the American health care system.

To allow the government takeover of that system, it seems to me, is something most Americans, if they were aware was happening, would not be for. I think the survey numbers bear that out. I think, as is true with cap and trade, the more the American people are engaged in this debate, the more they hear about it, the more objections they are going to have to the government takeover of health care in this country.

So these are both issues which need to be done thoughtfully and carefully and, frankly, they shouldn't be rushed out of here. We shouldn't be trying to pass health care out of the Senate before the August break. We shouldn't be talking about doing cap and trade--although I think that is now being pushed back into the fall.

These both have huge impacts on America's economy and get at the heart of the issue of how we are going to retain and create new jobs and expand our economy. These are very consequential issues and shouldn't be rushed. So I hope the Senate will take its time. I hope it will allow for full debate and that we will have an opportunity to put some of our ideas out there, some of the alternatives we think, in fact, would improve health care in this country and make it more affordable for more Americans.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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