Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I thank very much my colleague from Ohio, and I appreciate his advocacy for the working people of America, working to make America work for working Americans, both in terms of jobs and in terms of our health care system.

I rise tonight as well to address the importance of a public option. Here is where we are right now. We are within reach of a historic opportunity to provide accessible health care to every single American, and that would be tremendous. But if that accessible health care is unaffordable, then we have not reached our goal.

Right now, the cost of health care is doubling about every 6 to 7 years, and the pace is accelerating. It doubled over the last 9 years, and now it is on pace to double in 6 or 7 years. So folks who could afford insurance just a few years ago cannot afford it today, and families who can afford insurance today are not going to be able to afford it a couple years from now. So it is essential--essential--we bend the cost curve. Perhaps the most powerful instrument for bending the cost curve is the public option because it is the public option that brings competition and choice. This is as American as apple pie. competition and choice result in better service and lower costs.

Much of our Nation--our health care consumers--do not have a real choice. A couple companies dominate the market, dictate the terms, deny folks coverage, or drop coverage. So doesn't it concern all of us a little that after someone has paid their premiums for a decade or 15 years or 20 years, and they get really sick, the insurance company says: We are not renewing your insurance? That certainly is not a health care system.

When you do not have choices, you do not have improved service, you do not have lower costs. But a public option changes that equation because it introduces real competition in every health care market in America. It adds another choice for our citizens in every health care market in America.

This is important to stress. This is a choice. My colleague from Ohio pointed out this point, but I will point it out again. Sometimes as to the idea of introducing a community health plan or a public option, it is attacked by saying: What does government do well? Why would we want a plan from the government? Then the same critics turn around and say: The government is going to create a public option that is going to work so well it is going to drive every other option out of existence.

You cannot have it both ways, and neither extreme is accurate.

We have seen this idea work in many States in related areas. For example, in the State of Oregon, 20 years ago, Oregon's workers' compensation market was a mess. It is a form of insurance, and it is a form of health insurance. It is a form of insurance for workers on the job. We made reforms to that market in the last 20 years, including a redesigned public option that resulted in premium rates that are today less than half of what those rates were 20 years ago.

Let me repeat that. As a result of our reforms with a redesigned public option in Oregon's workers' compensation market in the last 20 years, it has resulted in premium rates today that are less than half of what they were 20 years ago. That is the result of introducing competition. That is the result of introducing choice.

The public option for workers' compensation was successful. It came under fire from insurers who did not like competition. But it was our business community that stepped up and saved it. Think how powerful it is for the success of a business to have good service and low premiums on workers' compensation. Translate that: how important it is to the success of our families to have good service and low premiums in their family health care premiums.

The public option in workers' compensation has been an economic development tool for the State of Oregon. During the last downturn, we recruited Amy's Kitchen--an organic food producer--into southern Oregon because they could save $2 million a year in workers' compensation rates from the place they were formerly doing business.

Well, this is what we need to do with health care. We need to have competition in every corner of this country. We need to have choice in every corner of this country. We need to empower consumers by giving them a community health option or a public option.

Madam President, I am pleased to speak to the public option tonight, and I look forward to comments from my colleagues. I thank Senator Brown from Ohio.

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