Health Care Reform
Floor Speech
HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (Senate - September 23, 2009)
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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia and the rest of my colleagues.
I have a few slides I wish to go through. But the basic point is, no matter what one thinks about the various health care bills that are out there and the various prescriptions that have been suggested, the status quo is not an option.
For me, this starts with fiscal responsibility. We have seen an unbelievable explosion in debt in our country, from $5 trillion, from the beginning of the previous administration, to $12 trillion today. If you look at what is causing it: As you can see from this slide, this is our revenue line. The biggest drivers of our deficit are the interest payments we have on this debt--that we are managing to pass on to our kids and our grandkids because we are unwilling to make the tough choices that need to be made--and rising Medicare and Medicaid costs, which is the red line right here. So one cost of inaction is we will continue to drive these insane deficits we are facing as a country.
In my State of Colorado--and the senior Senator from Colorado is in the Chamber as well--our working families and small businesses are suffering mightily because the economy is not working for them. Over the last decade, median family income in the State of Colorado has actually declined by $800 in real dollars, and that has happened all across the United States of America, where we see median family income down by $300.
At the same time, health care premiums have risen by 97 percent. The cost of higher education, by the way, has gone up 50 percent. Our working families are being asked to do more with less just for the basic necessities that are required to move your family ahead. These are not ``nice to haves.'' These are essential, if working families and the middle class are going to be able to move ahead.
The second reason we need reform is, as the Senator from Virginia said at the beginning of his comments, we are spending almost a fifth of our GDP on health care. That is more than twice a much as what any other industrialized country in the word is spending on their health care system.
As I have said in townhall meetings all across our State, this is no different than if you have two small businesses across the street from one another, with one spending a fifth of their revenue on their light bill and the other spending less than half that on their light bill. You do not need an MBA to know which of those two companies is going to be able to invest in their business plan and grow their business.
We have a lot to do to make sure this economy can compete in the 21st century. I would say one of the things we ought to do is not to devote a fifth of our economy to health care if we expect to compete.
This slide shows the rate of insurance premium increase in our State versus the rate of the increase in wages. These are absolutely related to each other. If you talk to small businesses in any State--I am sure this is true in Virginia, as well as it is true in Colorado--small business owners are desperately trying to keep their employees insured, but the choice they are making is to pay them less in wages. This wage compression is related directly to the rate of the insurance premium.
The other chart of this slide simply shows if we change nothing there are going to be families all across this country who, by 2016, are going to be spending 40 percent of their income on health care--that is before you get to higher ed; that is before you get to rent or food--40 percent of every dollar on health care. It is absurd.
We see that health care is bankrupting middle-class Americans all over this country. We know 62 percent of bankruptcies are health care related. What is staggering to me is, 78 percent of those bankruptcies are happening to people who had insurance. The entire reason people buy insurance is so they have stability when their child gets sick or their spouse gets sick or they get sick. Seventy-eight percent of these bankruptcies have happened to people who had insurance.
Then, finally, no one is burdened more by the current system than small business and the employees who work for small businesses. In our State, small business pays 18 percent more for health insurance just because they are small. When I say that, sometimes people say: Well, Michael, don't you understand that is because the pool is smaller and it is harder to spread the risk. I say: I understand that. But from a business point of view--and the Senator from Virginia and I both have spent a lot of time in our careers working in the private sector--from a business point of view, that is absurd because these small businesses, if they are investing 18 percent more, ought to be expecting to be 18 percent more productive or, at a minimum, ought to have 18 percent better health care, and that is absolutely not the case.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BENNET. My final point, Mr. President, is we have been having a healthy debate about how we should do this reform, and there are a lot of people who are concerned about things such as a public option, things such as government control over health care. I would argue that the status quo is what is producing that because fewer and fewer of our working families are covered at work--which is what this slide shows--and for every one of those people who then goes on uncompensated care, it is paid for by the American people.
So I join my colleagues today in saying, we absolutely cannot maintain this status quo. It is absolutely unsustainable. I look forward to a thoughtful, commonsense reform that works for working families and small businesses in my State.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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