The Majority Makers And Health Care

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman from Kentucky bringing up this topic and joining Dr. Kagen, my colleague; Mr. Sarbanes and Ms. Tsongas, who was with us, in discussion.

I look at the inscription that is over the Speaker's chair here in the United States Capitol, and it's Daniel Webster. Daniel Webster says, ``Let us bring the resources of our Nation, our institutions together,'' and may we do something here that is worth remembering and something worthwhile that may be remembered. I can't think of anything that would be more worthwhile to Daniel Webster's spirit than we could do to have people remember this 111th Congress and to provide the health care that's been sought for so many generations.

I think back to Harry Truman who really had this original concept and wanted to see national health care. You think about what Mr. Yarmuth talked about, the only industrialized nation on the Earth that does not have health care for its people. It is the greatest country on the face of the Earth, but we don't provide health care, and that's somehow an omission that this country has glaringly overlooked. Dr. King would certainly be in favor of such a bill because this is a Nation that has forgotten so many for so long, and we cannot continue to do that and be considered the greatest country on the face of the Earth.

This bill that President Obama talked about today, and has gotten through the committees with Mr. Miller, Mr. Rangel, Mr. Waxman and Speaker Pelosi, who have worked so hard on it--and there is a comparable bill in the Senate--will see to it that we save money, $500 billion over the next 10 years in Medicare, securing for our seniors a Medicare system that will be affordable and available and offer quality care. It will see to it that we ferret out fraud and waste from the system and make savings that will help reduce our deficit that we're presently experiencing. So there is a fiscal mechanism to this bill as well. It will see that pre-existing conditions cannot be used, as Mr. Yarmuth's couple was used as an example, to deprive people of health care insurance. There is a lot of profit in the system now with advertisements on television, profits for insurance companies and tremendous salaries and profits that are there; and they need to be wrung out of the system. One way we're going to do it is by having this public option plan compete and force insurance companies, if they intend to remain active in the market, to compete with a national system that does not have those same costs and will keep costs down. This will be more quality at a cheaper cost and more people covered. You know, there is a tax that we already have in America. When you have 47 million people--maybe 50 million at this point--without health insurance and 14,000 more people each month who lose their health insurance, when those people

get sick, they still get care someplace, sometime, but it's paid for by higher insurance premiums, it's paid for by higher taxes. Where there are community hospitals, they go to emergency rooms. You pay for it--the most expensive care possible in an emergency room which wouldn't be there if the people had insurance because they could go to their doctors--and it's paid for through property taxes by citizens in an expensive manner. This will be eliminated. So for all those cities, including mine, where we have The MED, a community hospital, a trauma center that treats a lot of people that don't have insurance at an expensive rate in the emergency room, those people will have insurance, and they won't be coming to the emergency room, and it won't cost our taxpayers as much which means that that trauma center will be available for trauma care, as it was intended. In case there is a disaster, it will be available as well and that trauma center can survive. There won't be this tax that's put on everybody for taking care of the uninsured in uncompensated care, which hospitals do, and just charge it to you in a higher bill that you get from your physician or from your health care provider. We're paying for it but without any controls. So the system is really out of control. It needs to be restrained.

Now Mr. Yarmuth talked about Canada. And I know that we probably don't want to compare anything we're doing here--except for hockey--to Canada. But I was with a Canadian minister yesterday in Memphis--not a minister in the clerical sense but a government official; and he told me that a lot of people compare our system to yours, he said, ``You know, our people live to an average of 81 years of age, and your people live to 78.'' He said, ``The increase in inflation in our health care is 1 percent a year, and in your system it's 10 percent a year.'' He mentioned some other figures, and this was his perspective. He said, ``I wouldn't trade our system for yours for anything.'' Our system is the most expensive health care on the face of the Earth, but it's not the best. And we're paying for it. And that's wrong. Not enough people get health care. I'm happy to be a part of this Congress, to support this bill with a strong public plan that will see to it that we can compete with the insurance industry to keep their costs down and to see that everybody has access to health care as this plan will.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source