Health Care Reform
Floor Speech
Health Care Reform
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I'm glad to be here on the House floor this evening, joined by many of my colleagues representing the class of 2006, to come down to the floor this evening to talk to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle about an issue that doesn't discriminate between Republicans and Democrats, an issue that doesn't care whether you're liberal or conservative. It is the lack of access to affordable health care in this country. The voters of this Nation gave the House and the Senate and the President a mandate last November. It was to come here and do something that has not been done in the modern history of this government, to finally make fundamental reform of our health care system so that the people that we represent do not go bankrupt by the current system, and the government that we are constituted to protect doesn't go bankrupt because of health care costs.
So we're here to talk this evening about what we think is an amazing opportunity for this House and for this country to pass a health care reform bill that, at the same time, expands coverage to people that either don't have health care insurance or today have inadequate health care insurance and, in doing so, reduces the cost of health care for all Americans and all of the countless businesses, small and large, that are struggling to pay for health care costs.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to turn this over to my colleagues to begin the discussion. But before we do, I just want to share one important chart and statistic with my colleagues. This is a chart that simply shows what has happened over the last 10 years to health care costs in this country, a 119 percent increase in the premiums that families and businesses are paying. During that same time, a 117 percent increase in the money coming out of workers' pockets to pay for that health care. A 119, 120 percent increase, let's round it off, in health care costs for businesses around this country.
That is unsustainable. And what it has meant is that during that time, any additional money that businesses have made over the last 10 years has largely gone not to workers' pockets, not to increased wages, but to pay health care bills. So we'll talk tonight about a lot of the visible costs of our very broken health care system, the scars on the outside that people have due to our neglect of the problems in our health care system.
But there are a lot of invisible costs as well. And what this chart very clearly shows is that when employers, over the last 10 years, are paying 120 percent increases, that means that a lot of workers out there aren't seeing raises, or are only seeing 2 percent when they should be getting 5 percent because their employer is sending all of that money into their insurance plan. And so we're going to talk about that tonight. We're going to frankly also talk about a lot of the mythology that's out there.
We had a speaker on the Republican side of the aisle earlier tonight come down here and use the now familiar Republican talking point of the government takeover of health care. Well, I think if any of our constituents out there do what every Member of Congress should do, which is read the bill, they'll find that there is no truth in that statement. That statement, though is anchored in a 28-page memo that made the rounds around the House of Representatives earlier this year by Frank Luntz, a very well known Republican pollster who laid out to Republicans how they could kill health care reform.
He said very clearly, don't pay attention to the details. Don't pay attention to the substance. Just say government takeover again and again and again. That memo is strewn with one piece of advice: If you say government takeover, you can stop health care reform from happening. And if you stop health care reform from happening, you can preserve the status quo.
That's what's happening here. Talking points and sound bites designed to stop health care reform from happening, designed to stop the reforms that will pass on lower costs to our constituents, that will guarantee access to people that don't have it, that will end these discriminatory practices of insurance companies. That's the agenda that is going to play out on the House floor over the coming weeks and months, an agenda anchored in reform, anchored in cost-cutting, anchored in expanding our access and a political agenda designed to use talking points and sound bites to stop health care reform from happening.
I'm glad to be joined here on the House floor by several of my colleagues to talk about the stakes of this debate, to talk about what is really in the bill versus what folks are claiming is in there. And we have some great leaders in this effort joining us tonight, led by my good friend from Colorado, Representative Perlmutter.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank my friend from Vermont. He talks about the public option. It gets a lot of attention out there. A lot of rhetoric gets thrown back and forth on the news networks at night, the cable TV shows, and right here about the public option. I think President Obama, in his speech before this Chamber, said it right: this isn't about ideology. A public option isn't about a liberal philosophy versus a conservative philosophy. The public option represents our best chance to start holding private insurers accountable and putting some real downward pressure on premiums. That's what we're all about. I mean, there should be total bipartisan agreement on that basic premise, that health care reform should be about bringing down the cost of premiums for all of our constituents.
Now, maybe there are a few people here who are so in bed with the health care industry that they like the fact that patients and consumers are paying through the roof for health care insurance and drugs and devices. But I think for most of us on both sides of the aisle we want to get to lower premiums, and what President Obama said, which I think laid it out pretty clearly, he said, I am for a public option because it's the best chance we have to put some pressure on the private insurers to bring costs down. But he said, If you can find me something else that does that, I am for that too or I'm for that instead. I agree.
I'm not for the public option because I think that the government has to have an insurance plan that's available to individuals because that is a baseline of my political ideology. I'm for it because that's the best way to bring down cost. And that's not just me saying that. That's the Congressional Budget Office. The Congressional Budget Office, when analyzing the House and Senate bills, says that having the choice of a public option in that exchange that any small business or individual could choose is a real pressure point as a nonprofit plan that doesn't have to pay marketing costs, advertising costs, big CEO salaries and doesn't have to make a return on its investment.
A nonprofit plan will reduce the cost of the bill and reduce the cost to our health care system by $100 billion. The whole bill together every year costs about $100 billion. So the public option alone essentially brings down the cost of the bill by the equivalent of 1 year of health care reform. So I think that if our friends on the Republican side of the aisle want to say ``no'' to the public option, well, that's their right to do so. But I think that they should come to the table with an alternative to try to deliver some cost savings to our constituents.
Now, maybe I oversimplify things when I say that this is about reform versus no reform. I'm sure there are people on the other side of the aisle that want to do something. But we have yet to see a reform plan from the Republicans that can prove to us that they're going to be able to lower costs for our constituents. I think once they do that, Mr. Perlmutter, we can have a real debate.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Reclaiming my time, I think we need to get at where the Republicans are coming from here because a lot of them just hate the public option. They hate it because apparently government-run medicine, a government-administered plan, shouldn't be an option for our constituents. They just do not want people out there to have the choice of a publicly sponsored plan. But then when you ask them whether it's still good enough for people that are 65 or older, no, Medicare is fine. We like Medicare. Well, how about is it good enough for our soldiers who are fighting for us overseas? No, it's good enough for our soldiers. What about for our veterans? No, government-sponsored medicine's good enough for our veterans. What about for Members of Congress? Well, yes, I want it for Members of Congress.
Well, publicly sponsored insurance is good enough for seniors. It's good enough for veterans. It's good enough for soldiers. It's good enough for public employees, for Members of Congress. All we want is for our constituents to have the ability to decide whether it's good enough for them, too. That's the choice that you're talking about, Mr. Hodes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Perlmutter, I don't really care. I'm a New York Giants fan. So you can have that bet with somebody else. But I like the fact that you just lump all of us New Englanders all in together that we believe and think the same things. We're diverse, despite what you may think.
Mr. Perlmutter, let me back you up on your discussion on what insurance companies are doing now. You're right. Insurance companies are playing by the rules today, and they've got shareholders, they've got investors. In the end, they've got to put a return out there for the people that are investing in their companies. That's why they call the money they spend on health care ``medical loss,'' because to them, as a business, that's a loss. Now, that doesn't mean that these are bad people that are running the business. It doesn't mean that they don't want to keep people healthy. But in the end, every dollar they spend on health care is less money that they can return to their shareholders.
So to try to gain a competitive advantage against each other, they engage in these practices, like keeping out people that are sick and charging more for people in their plans when they get sick, rescinding policies when you get sick because you didn't cross your ``T'' or dot your ``I.''
But, frankly, Mr. Perlmutter, a lot of the insurance companies that are part of the health care reform debate don't really have a problem with the rules changing with respect to preexisting conditions and rescission, because as long as they apply to everybody, as long as none of their competitors can get an advantage over the other by excluding sick people or charging more for sick people, then they're okay, as long as everybody's doing the right thing.
Frankly, that's why it's bewildering to me that we are still sitting here today having not done this 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And it's why I doubt some of my Republican friends who all of a sudden are for these reforms, because they had 12 years when they controlled the House. They could have done it during any of that time.
So I think there are clearly places, as Mr. Welch outlined, where we are going to depart from the insurance companies. They don't want this competition from the public option. They don't want to have that pressure for their costs to come down. But I think there are going to be some places where we can get some agreement here. And my hope is that as we try to get to the finish line, that we set the lines in the sand where we're not going to be able to compromise with the health insurance company, with the drug industry, but we also understand there are going to be some places that we can come together here on, Mr. Hodes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you.
Thank you to Mr. Hodes, Mr. Welch for joining us down here for this hour.
Listen, I think we have heard loud and clear from the businesses we represent, from individuals, from doctors, from hospitals: Things need to change.
Just take this one last statistic home with you. If we do nothing, if we allow the status quo to continue, within 30 years health care costs will consume almost half of every dollar spent in this country--every dollar that businesses are spending and individuals are spending and the government is spending. That is ruinous for this Nation. That course cannot stand.
So I hope that as we debate this over the coming weeks and coming months that we can have some coming together here, we can agree on the bottom lines of health care reform, get coverage to people who don't have it, and lower costs to everybody. And we will shut out the people who scream government takeovers and death panels and all of the rest. All of the people either inside this building or outside this building whose agenda is to either stop health care from happening or to score political points shouldn't have a place at the table. But anyone who wants to have an honest debate about how we make the system work better for people we represent I think should be there. I think that's something we can all come together on.
I thank my colleagues for joining us this evening. We will be back as much as we can.
Source