Comprehensive Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. As you said, we both sat on the Public Health Committee in Hartford, Connecticut, in the State legislature. You did an absolutely outstanding job for the people of the State. You were the guy that was there to implement SCHIP. We call it HUSKY in Connecticut, for obvious reasons--because we have the best men's and women's basketball teams in the country right now in the NCAA.

You also did, again, a lot of other path breaking legislation during your time there. It's very exciting to see you now on the Energy and Commerce Committee to continue that work at the national level.

I wanted to follow up actually on a couple of comments that our colleague from Pennsylvania brought up regarding the fact that, A, in the short time that President Obama has been in office, he followed through on a campaign promise to extend health insurance to 4 million more children in this country. As the three of us know, this was an issue that people clawed at each for 2 solid years. And then, within 2 weeks of coming into office, we were able to accomplish that historic expansion and strengthen coverage for things like dental care and mental health care, which anybody out there talking to the pediatric community knows, was a real weakness in the SCHIP program that has now been in effect for the last 10 years.

His stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, recognizes the fact that we have lost 3 million jobs in this country and, unfortunately, in America, when people lose their jobs, they also lose their health care in many instances because we have an employment-based system. And his proposal which creates a COBRA subsidy, providing 65 percent of the premium costs for unemployed individuals, is really just a major change in the health care landscape in this country.

Like a lot of Members, I have been at unemployment offices over the last 3 weeks or so. Connecticut has been hard hit, like other parts of the country. And talking to the folks who are in the offices describing the individuals coming in, who in many instances have never experienced a layoff in their lifetime, and in many instances had very solid, upper middle-income salaries, now have all these problems thrust at them.

But the number one issue that constantly comes up for people who are at that desk trying to contend with a blizzard of new programs that they have never dealt with before is, How do I keep my health insurance for my families? And the cost of COBRA extension is brutal. It averages around $700 or $800 a month. If you just do the simple math in terms of what an unemployment check will cover, this COBRA extension, which President Obama has included in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is just going to be a tremendous help for working families who are trying to get through this very difficult patch.

There's another issue, though, which Mr. Altmire mentioned, which is also in the plan, which is an investment, really an infrastructure investment, in health IT. About $19 billion is included in the plan. And Jason mentioned earlier that the VA and the military health care system is actually kind of ahead of the curve in terms of the civilian sector.

I had a chance actually to personally see that in December when I was over in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was at Walter Reed Hospital in December, visiting a young soldier from East Lyme, Connecticut, who was shot by a sniper in mid November. He was being treated at Walter Reed. Talked about the great care that he received at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany.

And on our way back from Iraq and Afghanistan, we stopped at Landstuhl Hospital and I was up talking to the nurses on the ward and the doctor who actually performed surgery on him. I mentioned his name. This was about 6 weeks after the fact. They all knew him right away.

One of the reasons why, other than the fact they're just great people who really care about their patients, is that they have a totally interoperable system of health IT within the military hospital system. So the doctor can pull up on a computer the treatment files of this soldier who's in Washington, D.C., at Walter Reed Hospital, and interact with his doctors, answer any questions that may come up in terms of his recuperation. It was remarkable.

And the question Jason asked is, Why can't we have this in the regular health care system in this country? Obviously, it's because we have a very fragmented system, and we need to overcome these issues of interoperability.

One of the ways it does it is to build on a system that George Bush started. He created the Office of National Coordinator of Health Care Information Technology. That was a Bush Executive Order. And what the recovery plan does is it basically takes that office, which is dealing with these issues of interoperability, and pump new funds into the program and just moving this

country forward much quicker than it otherwise might have done under the prior administration's budget.

Well, there's an urban legend already out there claiming--and it's in the blogs and it's on some of the cable TV shows--that somehow this National Coordinator of Health Care Information is creating a nationalized socialized system of health care and it's going to mandate treatments that doctors and hospitals are going to have to administer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This office, which was created by George W. Bush, is strictly an IT office that is dealing, again, with implementation of computer technology in this system which, again, as Congressman Altmire said, needs a lot of work because it's a very fragmented system, particularly when you're trying to bring in doctors and health care providers who are outside of the hospital network into the system of health care information technologies.

So, for anybody out there listening who has heard these ridiculous claims that somehow this bill is going to create a one-size-fits-all system of health care, nothing could be further from the truth. This bill is about trying to, again, implement what George Bush started, and which makes common sense for anybody. All the stakeholders and health care systems agree that health care IT, making the system more efficient, coordinating care by just sharing information in a safe and secure manner, is a way to really move the ball forward in this country towards a system of universal access and high-quality care.

So, if people are hearing those rumors--and I have had some seniors call the office saying they don't like the idea of this--the fact of the matter is that this is a program which the military uses, which the VA uses, which is going to be good for care in terms of eliminating errors in the system because of just the fact that bad information is being shared by different providers.

It does nothing in terms of changing the doctor-patient relationship, the patient-hospital relationship. The government is not getting involved in the decision-making of how your health care is going to be decided or administered.

Holding this forum on the night before the vote, Mr. Murphy, I think is a great opportunity to clarify, again, some of the really good steps forward that President Obama is asking the Congress to vote for.

Like yourself, I know we believe that, as folks who have worked on this issue for an awful long time, that this is a real opportunity in a very difficult time of our country to move forward for all Americans.

So, with that, I will be happy to yield back to you.

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