The Progressive Message

Statement

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, what a pleasure it is to claim this hour, this Special Order, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is the body of Members of Congress who believe that we're all better off together than we are separated and apart. We believe that we need a mixed economy, in which, yes, people are entitled to pursue their private dreams and make their money, but also there are certain things that we should do together, things like take care of the water, things like provide for transportation, things like provide for education and things like health care.

The Progressive Caucus is the body of people here in the Congress who stand by the idea that the civil rights movement was a great moment in American history, that FDR and the New Deal was another great moment in American history and that the steps forward to end slavery was a great moment in American history.

And yet the greatest moments of American history have not yet been written but are really still in front of us. We still have more people to bring into the ambit, bring into the embrace of this great American ideal, the progressive ideal, this idea that America has not yet done the best it can do. We have more people to include, more people to help find that internal light of their own and that this is the time to walk forward into that history.

We have the Congressional Progressive Caucus that comes together today. We started out, Mr. Speaker, as a group that said, we would like to see in the area of health care a single-payer system. This was our position. But we've compromised, because we're practical progressives. We said we can have health care reform if we have a public option, but we can't go any further than that. There must be a public option in the health care plan. And it looks like we are going to have one. We are excited about the prospect of seeing this public option. It appears as though it is moving forward, Mr. Speaker. And it's a good thing because it's what America needs. It's what America needs.

This is the Progressive Message, and we are here to talk about health care tonight. Health care, Mr. Speaker, is the boiling issue. It is the issue that is all the talk around the Congress; it is the issue that is all the talk around America. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, it is a fact, it is a belief and a firmly held belief of my own that health care is a movement that is essentially a civil rights movement. It has the same level of intensity as that movement. And it has the same urgency as that movement.

I'm inspired by the words of Martin Luther King, Mr. Speaker, who said that we have the fierce urgency of now, the fierce urgency of now, that we can't say that somebody else can get their freedom at some other time, at a more convenient time, at a time when it makes sense and is comfortable for everybody.

No, he said civil rights now, not later, and not have to say today we have got to have health care for all, right now, not later. The fierce urgency of now, Mr. Speaker.

I want to let you know, Mr. Speaker, that when I was watching television last night, I was tuned into President Barack Obama. And I want to let you know that I was very proud of President Obama last night, Mr. Speaker. President Obama came before the American people and articulated a case, as skillfully as any arguer or orator ever could, for health care, health care now.

The thing that really grabbed my attention, Mr. Speaker, is when he was asked by a reporter, why does it have to be now, and the reporter asked in somewhat of a challenging and slightly derisive tone of voice, why does it have to be now? Can't it just be some other time? Mr. Speaker, President Obama said, you know, I can't delay it when I read the letters that I get. The letters tell me that we have got to act now. We can't put it off another day. We've got to do it now. And I actually was cheering at the television screen as President Obama was saying these things. It's so nice to have a President that you truly agree with and believe in and think is a real champion for the people who elected him.

So in that spirit of President Obama saying that the letters and the stories that people are going through propel him toward action, let me share a few stories of my own, Mr. Speaker, because my constituents write me letters too, and those help move me and motivate me toward action for true health care reform. Instead of my hitting you first with the facts and figures and all those things, I just want to start out tonight, Mr. Speaker, with stories and letters from my constituents.

Let me talk about Mary from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mary says, my daughter needed her wisdom teeth out. At the same time, with insurance, we were told to pay $375, which we did, then got billed over $1,000, resubmitted, eventually the amount was reduced to $750. In the meantime, my husband got no paycheck. I have calcium deposits in my back which make it difficult to walk, and I can't afford the copays, so I'm waiting until it's so bad that I can't walk.

Mr. Speaker, Mary needs help. Mary needs a caring, committed government that is listening to her and is going to help bring forth legislation which can allow her to work with her doctor and her health care provider with the solutions that she needs. No government official in the middle between Mary and her health care provider. That's nothing but spooky, scary stuff, and it's not true.

Let's hear from Denise: I find more and more often that my family and I are skipping doctor visits for preventive care, and when we would have made a visit to the doctor in the past, but now can't afford the co-payments to be seen. This is especially true for childhood illnesses such as allergy visits or medication, dental problems that could potentially be serious, and injuries that, in reality, should be checked out by a doctor. My family is insured. Yet because of our current employment situation, combined with rising health care costs, it has come out of reach to have the kind of health care we have enjoyed in the past. I feel that we are being left behind for an inability to be able to bear the burden of the cost. This may mean that we will pay dearly in the future for things that could have been prevented or less serious had they been able to see a doctor initially.

As I listen to Denise from Minneapolis's story, I'm thinking, Mr. Speaker, about the global, the larger trends in our society that are sweeping her up and affecting her. She's talking about being insured, having a job, but having to go without because of the costs of copays and premiums. Well, Mr. Speaker, one of these startling facts that you might want to know is that over the last 9 years, premiums have doubled for people who have insurance, and while wages have been flat, premiums have been increasing much faster than wages have, and this has made a squeeze on the American household budget. Denise needs a hand, Mr. Speaker. Denise needs somebody to care.

Janice from Golden Valley, Minnesota: I've worked every day since I turned 15, and I'm currently 51. I'm married with two teenage children. I have a college degree. We have always lived a balanced and frugal life. We do not take exotic trips and mostly buy generic groceries and thrift or discount store clothing. I do not and never have smoked or drank, and I have been in my job for 20 years, yet I bring home less and less each year due primarily to health care premiums and costs. Health care premiums and copays cost about 25 to 30 percent of my income. Health care premiums cost me more than my Federal, State, Social Security, union dues and retirement plan deduction combined from each paycheck.

The increase has been so great that we have stopped being able to contribute to savings for 4 years. The one thing I fear more than anything is me or my family member getting sick because of what treatment will cost even beyond the premium costs. When I have a strange new sensation in my eye or a vein hurting in my leg or a dull pain in my chest, I just pray it will go away on its own because I'm afraid of what it will cost me.

We pay out so much for health care insurance, yet we cannot afford to really even use it. And I feel even worse for those who have no health insurance at all. This reflects badly on what America has become, a place where only the wealthiest survive and profit by a few takes priority over the basic needs of all.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you about the story of Anita. I'm armed with statistics tonight, Mr. Speaker, and I have them. But they don't mean a thing next to these stories of these citizens, these good, honest Americans from my State of Minnesota whose stories I want to bring to you tonight.

Let me talk to you about Cynthia from Minnesota. Cynthia says: As an asthmatic and a mother of an asthmatic, I would think the insurance company would be happy that we go for our annual check up and would be willing to cover our medicines so that we stay healthy and don't end up costing them more. Much to my surprise, the insurance company would not cover our asthma checks, and the cost of our prescriptions has gone through the roof. Unfortunately, our meds are not part of the formulary drug list. What ends up happening is I cover my child's meds, and I don't get any. I just hope we are near each other if I have an attack.

Mr. Speaker, that is no way to treat Americans who are trying to make it in this society.

How about this one. Maria from Minnesota: My daughter is 24. She has had a polycystic ovarian disease since she was 15 requiring three surgeries, five hospital visits and many, many office calls. This is a chronic condition which will probably result in infertility or at the least difficulty in achieving pregnancy. This is physically draining, as she is often in pain and has been on many narcotic pain meds, including Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin.

In addition, the idea of not having children is a tough thing to face as a teenager and young adult. If that wasn't enough, she also has a degenerative disk disease in her cervical spine. This has resulted in a herniated disk and chronic constant pain. Again, there is no cure for this and no real treatment. Since she is an adult, she no longer is eligible to be under our insurance plans. She has a BA degree, but has not been able to find long-term employment in her field which would offer benefits. Rather, she is managing a bar restaurant, which is a good job, but it's not what she went to school for.

She's working as a bartender at least 60 hours a week, on her feet all the time. She pays her own bills, lives on her own, but because of her chronic condition, has not been able to get COBRA insurance and, instead, has a policy through a private insurance company paying over $200 a month, which doesn't cover many of her needs. This is outrageous.

Please, please understand she is not sitting at home waiting for a handout. She's so motivated and such a hard worker, but the insurance costs are eating up her paychecks. She's my hero, as I can't imagine facing these conditions and then having the minimum coverage while paying the maximum bill.

Mr. Speaker, I just thought I'd start off this Progressive Hour with some real stories from real people, real stories for real people who are dealing with a very difficult situation. Mr. Speaker, let's not relegate them to the status quo.

My colleagues, many of them on the other side of the aisle, are essentially saying let's keep it how it is. Let's stop moving so fast. Let's not let this process move along too quickly. And some have been caught offhandedly making the comments that they think that they can take President Obama down. Is that what this is about, taking somebody down?

This should be about lifting somebody up, the American people, lifting them up, not trying to score a partisan point in a political game. This is real life people are going through, real life like the Minnesotans that I just talked about. But as I speak here tonight, Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that in every State in this Union and in every territory of this country, there are stories exactly like these.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about what the bill actually does a little bit, but before I do, I want to talk a little bit about the cost of this health care reform because, you know, first of all, there is this big fear thing around cost, and this is one of the major ways that some detractors are trying to stop things. So first let's talk about the individual cost, the cost to the person.

Without reform, the cost of health care for the average family of four is estimated to rise $1,800 every year for years to come, and insurance companies will make more health care decisions. Okay. Status quo, hand the insurance companies 1,800 bucks every year. In 2 years that's 3,600, in 4 years it's more than that. The fact is this is the status quo. And I was so proud to hear President Obama last night saying, if somebody offered you a plan that was going to double, that was guaranteed to double in cost and was going to push more people into the ranks of the insured, would you want that, because that's what we have now. Again, another brilliant oratorical flourish rooted in the truth.

So one cost is the 1,800 bucks every year estimated to increase, but let's talk about the individual costs a little bit more. If we have health care reform, if we have health care reform, Mr. Speaker, no more copays or deductibles for preventive care. That will help a family budget. No more rate increases for preexisting conditions, gender or occupation. That will help the family budget. No more annual cap on out-of-pocket expenses. That's going to help the family budget. Group rates of a national pool, if you buy your own plan, that should hold costs down. Guaranteed affordable oral, hearing and vision care for your kids, that will definitely help the family budget out.

The fact is that this bill is designed to help families deal with the escalating costs of health care. It's not about increasing costs or increasing debt or anything like that. It's about helping the family budget stay in a place where families can actually get ahead a little bit for the first time in a long time, for the first time under a budget, under an economic philosophy where the rich didn't have enough and the poor had too much in the minds of some people.

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, we need to talk about costs tonight. We need to talk about it, and I want to go now to the recent--the CBO budget scores have been tossed around a lot. We've been hearing a lot about what the CBO says. The CBO says this, the CBO says that. Let me talk about what the CBO actually says, really says.

On July 17, the Congressional Budget Office released estimates confirming that the health care insurance reform policies of H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Care Choices Act, are deficit-neutral over a 10-year budget window. That means that they don't add to the budget. They're deficit-neutral, even producing a $6 billion surplus.

CBO estimated that the cost of the bill's insurance reforms was $1.042 trillion, while the bill's cost savings and revenues totaled about $1.48 trillion. This is over a 10-year period. CBO estimated that these reforms will provide affordable coverage for 97 percent of Americans 2 years after the program starts. Now, that's really something, Mr. Speaker.

It was also reported in the press, CBO also estimated that the overall bill has a net cost of $239 billion over 10 years, but this is entirely due to additional provisions in the bill to maintain current Medicare physician payment rates costing $245 billion over 10 years by preventing scheduled draconian cuts.

The House agreed earlier this year that this $245 billion cost would be exempt from PAYGO. The President's budget acknowledged the flawed Medicare physician payment formula and allotted money to address it. Then, in voting for the budget resolution in April, the House voted to exempt Medicare physician payment provisions from PAYGO. The statutory PAYGO bill to be considered by the House this week, passed through this House this week, also exempts these provisions from PAYGO.

Mr. Speaker, let me also add that this bill preserves and increases options, plan options. Those eligible for the exchange--and I'll talk about that in a moment--choose from all options, private and public. No one can steer them to any particular plan.

CBO projects that by the year 2019 about 9 to 10 million Americans, or a little more than 3 percent of Americans, will choose the public option. CBO projects that the most of these using the exchange will choose private sector plans. This confirms that the bill creates a level playing field where the public option will compete with private plans on a fair basis and that the public plan will not necessarily push them out of existence.

Again, I'm a single-payer advocate, but I wanted to talk about, just a little bit about this cost, because this is the very thing that detractors are using to try to scare Americans away from real health care reform with, and I think that Americans deserve better. They deserve the truth, and they should know that this plan is one that's designed to help save them money. Let's talk a little bit more about health care costs.

Health care costs for small businesses have grown 30 percent since the year 2000. The average family premium costs $1,100 more per year because our health care system fails to cover everyone. The average individual premium costs $410 or more.

The fact is we're joined here tonight by one of the great, great, great stalwarts and heroes of health care reform, none other than JOHN CONYERS, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, second-most senior Member of the House of Representatives.

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, if the gentleman yields back, I just want to point out that you mentioned Medicare has an administrative fee of about 3 to 5 percent. The fact is, however, that if you look at the top five health insurance companies, their administrative costs are 17 percent, and if you look at the average overall private insurance, it's about 14 percent.

What do they spend all that money on? How come they can't get down to a reasonable percentage of medical loss ratio? Does the fact that some of these CEOs just get exorbitant pay have anything to do with it? And if there was a public option--the CEO of the public option, I guess, would be Governor Sebelius, who is the Secretary of HHS, Health and Human Services. She is not making $10 million a year as a public servant. I guess my question is what are they spending all that money on. How come they can't be more efficient?

Mr. CONYERS. Well, exorbitant salaries to the chief executives and the managers of the company, as you imply, runs into millions of dollars annually, and many of them are the precise people who, through their lobbyists on K Street, are fighting any kind of serious health care reform. It's not a pretty picture.

Mr. ELLISON. Well, if the gentleman would yield, it was recently reported that the lobbyists are spending $1.4 million a day to try to stop health care. Why would they want to spend so much money? And does this amount of money, $1.4 million a day, how does that compare to the profits that they reap by, say, excluding people? They are excluding their enrollees and are not covering medical procedures.

Mr. CONYERS. Well, there is a relationship, and that's what makes it so difficult for us to come to a conclusion and to do something about this. Notwithstanding the great intellect of the President and his determination to correct the situation, there are people that put profits before health care. I'm sorry that that's the case, but that's what it really comes down to.

Mr. ELLISON. I just want to say that in this last 5 minutes that we're here tonight with this Progressive Hour that the goal and the purpose and the soul of our efforts to reform health care should focus on the word care, health care. We should act like we care. This is not widgets; this is people.

At the beginning of this hour, Mr. Speaker and Congressman Conyers, I shared stories about people from my district. I know you could have done the same thing. You get letters. The President gets letters. We all get letters. But care should be what drives us. I believe that you, Mr. Conyers, have worked so hard and done so much to start with a single payer, but because of your advocacy, we have gotten to a point where a public option is a real option, and I thank you for that.

But public option is not the best name. It could be called patient option or a we're-in-this-together option, an option that says that we're going to have a public plan that could compete with the private plans, that could have some real cost drivers; not just drive down cost, but can offer best practices so that we really put an emphasis on health care and wellness, not just on processing people, fee-for-service, overutilization, which, as you know, has been a very serious, serious problem.

I think as we close up, Mr. Speaker--and I want to leave the gentleman from Michigan time to make some closing remarks, and we'll give him the final word since he's so eloquent--I just want to say that it's important for us to understand that if Americans want real health care reform, the time is now, I think, Mr. Speaker, to raise your voice. I'm not saying what people should or shouldn't do, but I'm saying that if you want health care reform, this is not the time to be silent. It's a time to raise your voice. And if you happen to live in an area where you have a Representative who is not for reform, I think that this is an especially important time to have something to say about that and exercise your constitutional right and offer your views on that.

I just want to say that we've fought hard here, and this piece of legislation that we're fighting for now is every bit of a civil rights issue as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed just a few years before you came to Congress, Mr. Conyers, so

you really were in the ambit and in the aura of this great triumph of American democracy. You were a friend of Martin Luther King. In fact, Rosa Parks worked in your office for many years and was a dear friend of yours throughout her life.

I think I feel something like what you must have felt then, that we are on the doorstep of seeing great change in the American democracy, but it's going to take the energy and the prayers and the voices of everyone to get us over the line. When the President comes out on the television here at prime time, it's not just because he doesn't have anything else to do.

It's serious. It's important, and it's very essential that everybody click in, raise their voice and make sure that if you want health care reform, if you want an end to being dropped and kicked off and denied for a preexisting condition, that if you're tired of discrimination because of gender and because of age, if you feel that a public option should be able to compete with a private insurance to drive cost down, and if you really believe that in our country that a health insurance company should be able to operate with a 4 or 5, 6 or 7 percent administrative cost as opposed to 17, 18, 19 percent, completely inefficient, then it's time to step up and do something about it. It's time to step forward.

If you want to do something about health care disparities between people of color and other people, it's time to step up and do something about it. This is not the time to sit back and figure, Well, Conyers will probably save us. Obama will save us. Somebody will do the right thing. No, this is time for everybody to step up and demonstrate their own leadership.

With the moments remaining, I just want to yield--I think that's it. The gentleman from Michigan has yielded to me. Therefore, what I'm going to do is thank the Speaker for allowing us to come to the floor tonight and talk about the Progressive Caucus, arguing for a public option, starting out our debate for single-payer health care, but being reasonable and being practical and saying that we've got to have a public option, that that is where we stop compromising.

We've done our part already. We are proud that people like Congressman Kucinich have made it possible for States to be able to pursue single-payer. We're practical Progressives. We're not doctrine here. We're practical. What we want is good results for the people of the United States so we can join the 36 other countries in this world who have national health insurance.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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