Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Well, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, who has tremendous experience with government-run health care in the State of Tennessee. And after he saw the 1,990-page bill that we received last week and saw how much government intervention is

involved through that bill, how many unfunded mandates are being passed onto the States, how many government bureaucracies are created, how many times the word ``shall'' appears in that bill, this is truly transformational.

Some of the Members of our caucus have said that this is the most significant debate that they have ever been involved in. So for those of us who are freshmen and did come here to reduce the size of State government, or to reduce spending, or to, as the gentleman from Louisiana said, reform health care, we are seeing things that we hoped would not be a consequence, and that being more government intervention, more spending, more involvement in our lives.

And so we are here to protect people from more government intervention and to protect the relationships that you have with your doctor, with your local community hospital, with your health care provider so you all can make decisions regarding your own lives and your own quality of treatment and the efforts that you will make to enjoy the type of health care and quality of life that you hope to have in your communities. And that is reflected in this recent survey of women. Sixty-four percent of American women would rather have private health insurance than a government-run health insurance plan. Sixty-six percent describe their health insurance as excellent or good. Seventy-four percent describe their health care as excellent or good. Seventy-five percent want few to no changes made in their own health care.

We all know that there needs to be some reform. The cost is too high, and in some areas access is limited. And certainly with regard to Medicare, in rural areas hospitals and doctors are not reimbursed for the full cost of providing the services they provide. In my home State of Wyoming, in fact, the hospital in Casper, Wyoming, has said they are only reimbursed for about one-third of the actual cost of providing care to a Medicare patient.

Now, some doctors who are reimbursed at these very low levels have decided not to take Medicare patients anymore. So, when things like that happen, we really are denying access to care by having a government-run program.

Not only that--and this is one of my greatest concerns--it's what we are giving up by taking on a government-run program. Let's compare ourselves to countries that have government-run programs. Let's look specifically at cancer.

For men in the U.S., survival rates exceed 60 percent and also for women. In fact, two-thirds of women will survive. Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom are all significantly below the United States in terms of survival rates. One of the reasons for that is, when diagnosis occurs in the United States, treatment follows much more quickly than in some of these countries. So, if you are rationing care, that is a consequence. You don't have the same survival rates that we do in the United States.

Take, for example, my own sister-in-law. She was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer on her annual mammogram. She had no symptoms. She had none of the usual markers or factors which would indicate she had a risk of an aggressive breast cancer. Yet she was diagnosed based on her annual mammogram. She was in surgery in the same month that she was diagnosed, and she then began a regimen of both radiation and chemotherapy. Shortly thereafter, it saved her life.

So she falls into that category of two-thirds of American women who are surviving cancer. In fact, with breast cancer, it's a very significant number--the difference between survivability in the United States versus survivability in European countries--and that's because health care is rationed. This is a quote by the chief justice on the Canadian Supreme Court: access to a waiting list is not access to health care.

In this bill, we have to have assurance that we're not going to be on a waiting list. Quite frankly, we don't have that at all. In fact, based on what I've read in this 1,990-page bill and based on what I've been told by my colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee who is leading this discussion tonight, in fact, we will have rationing. The cost will be tremendous, and the taxes that will be imposed on so many of us as a result will be exorbitant.

So it sounds to me like health care reform, in the style of the bill that was introduced last week, includes higher taxes, penalties, less choice, more government, more costs to States, more costs to individuals, more costs to small business, and no guarantee of an improvement in access, in quality or in the ability to craft a plan of treatment between you and your physician or to seek a second or third opinion in the event you feel it's necessary for you, for your family, for your parents or for your children.

This is not health care reform as was envisioned by my colleagues who are here tonight, the gentleman from Louisiana and the gentleman from Tennessee.

Thank you kindly for allowing me to join you.

I yield back.

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