Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009 - Motion To Proceed
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it has been a pleasure to listen to the comments of my colleagues from Michigan and Alaska, Senators STABENOW and BEGICH.
The bill before us saves lives, saves money, saves jobs, strengthens Medicare, and ends insurance abuse. You wouldn't have known that is the case if you were tuning in earlier to the Republican discussion in the last hour because what we had were a series of interesting arguments ranging from the plain silly to the flat wrong.
On the plain-silly end, we had a stack of paper about the complexity of a bill that addresses one-sixth of our economy and quality of life for every single American. My friend from Alaska has pointed out that if you put it in a normal size print, that is about equal to a normal book. I think we ought to realize that with a topic as serious as health care reform, which is touching the lives of every American, you are going to want to be thoughtful enough to address it in that detail.
We also had in the last hour a conversation about how much does the bill cost per page. Senator Gregg from New Hampshire said the bill is going to cost $2 trillion and there are 2,000 pages, so it costs $2 billion a page. Last I checked with my schoolchildren, 2 divided by 2 is 1, not 2 divided by 2 is 2. But that is not the point. The point is, health care reform is not an issue to be played with hysterics, to be played with phony visuals, to be played with phony math. This is about our future, a future in which our businesses can compete around the world and in which our small businesses are able to provide health care. In fact, this is about quality of life for every single American.
In the course of my colleagues from across the aisle discussing the bill, they actually made a pretty good case for it. Let me start with Senator Burr.
Senator Burr said health care reform should be about choice but this bill takes one-size-fits-all. Boy, I thought, he is absolutely right. Health care reform should be about choice, and this bill before us is about choice.
Right now in America, we have one dominant player in most major health care markets. Even if we have more than one, we have antitrust exemptions that enable the health care companies to collaborate and cooperate. So you don't have real choice in the marketplace today.
What does this bill do? This bill says we are going to give every American the same type of choice Federal employees have. I became a Federal employee in January after I was elected and sworn in. I was told to go to a Web site and look at all the choices I had. My wife and I sat down and looked at the situation facing our family, and we chose the health care plan we thought would be best for us. We had that choice. What this bill does is it creates a health care exchange or health care marketplace that creates those choices and puts them in front of every family.
I will tell you that right now it is very hard for an insurance company to go into a new market. Why is that the case? Because in health care, unlike in life insurance, you have to do contracts with the providers. You cannot sell health insurance if you don't have arrangements with the hospitals and the doctors. It is very expensive to do. You don't yet have any customers. So it is very hard to break into a new market. But now, if you have a computer marketplace that citizens who go to the exchange are going to see and have a chance to change plans every year, you have automatic access to the customers and you can then afford to make contracts with the hospitals and physicians. It encourages competition across State lines. Take Oregon. You may have a company operating in Washington, Idaho, or California now say: Yes, we want to be on that exchange in Oregon.
I say to my colleague from North Carolina, he is right, reform should be about choice, and this bill is about choice.
My colleague, Senator Barrasso, told a poignant story. He told a story about his wife having breast cancer and how fortunate he was and she was and their family was that it was detected by a mammogram and how important that type of preventive care is. I couldn't agree with him more. But millions of Americans--45 million, 47 million, one report says 50 million--do not have health care, and therefore they cannot get those preventive tests. They cannot get that mammogram if they are a woman. They cannot get that prostate checked if they are a man.
Senator Barrasso makes a very good point about why we need to expand health care coverage throughout this Nation. The bill Senator Reid has put before us will reach between 94 to 98 percent of all Americans.
The question came up: Why not 100 percent? Because Americans move a lot. Americans have crises and may not be paying attention when they are supposed to sign up. There will always be a small part of the population that is not signed up for health care. That is why it is a few percentage points. Let's put it this way: 100 percent of
Americans will have the opportunity to have affordable, accessible health care. That is what this bill is about.
Returning to my colleague from North Carolina, he made the point that the bill before us is not about reform and that it should be about reform, about insurance reform. I have good news, good tidings for my colleague from North Carolina. Embedded in this bill are all kinds of reforms that are important for every person who has insurance in the United States of America.
First of all, guaranteed issue. You cannot be turned down because you have a preexisting condition if we pass this bill. I cannot tell you how many Oregonians--and I am sure it is true in North Carolina--have been turned down for health care insurance because of some health care problem they had in the past, maybe in the far past of their life.
This bill says you cannot have a lifetime limit. What kind of insurance do you really have if you have a $50,000 or $100,000 lifetime limit? After 20 years of paying your premiums, you get sick and, as you all know, you can wipe out $50,000 or $100,000 in a week or two. And now you are informed--you paid health care insurance for 20 years, you have been in the hospital for 2 weeks--sorry, you are on your own now. What kind of insurance is that when it is not there when you need it? This bill reforms that.
This bill adds nondiscrimination for gender, which is a fundamental value I think all Americans share.
This bill says you cannot be dumped off your insurance when you get sick or you have an accident. How many Americans have paid health care insurance premiums for years, paid those premiums month after month, are very healthy, rarely go to the hospital, rarely go to the doctor, but then they have a car accident and are seriously injured or they have bad news and have gotten a serious disease and they get that letter from their insurance company saying: Sorry, we are not renewing your insurance; you are on your own. So now, because preexisting conditions are not allowed, they cannot get insurance from anybody else either. They truly are on their own. This bill reforms that.
I am glad to let my colleague from North Carolina know that this bill is about reform.
Senator Enzi noted the story of selling shoes, that he had three shoestores and that when a customer came in and he showed him a shoe and that customer said that shoe is too expensive, he knew he shouldn't keep pushing the same shoe, he should not keep trying to sell it. No, he should show him a different shoe. That is exactly what the public option does in this bill.
Those who are in support of the status quo and don't want reform, they want to keep sending the same shoe, keep saying: Americans, you have only one choice or maybe a couple choices. But within a situation where there are no antitrust provisions, you just have to keep going back to that private company--no new shoe for you; no different product for you. But this bill says: No, if you are not happy with that, there is another alternative. In fact, this bill not only gives you one new shoe, it gives you two. Nonprofit co-ops can be set up--a provision that came to us through the Finance Committee--and it gives you a strong public option, a plan dedicated to healing, not dedicated to profits. So if you are not satisfied with the insurance you have, you have some alternative choices.
I think my colleagues across the aisle made a very good case--maybe better than the case I could make--for the fact that we need health care reform. We need it for large businesses so they can compete around the world, and we need it for our small businesses so they can afford to provide health care to their employees. We need it for our families because health care is about the biggest stress families face in America. If you have health care, you are worried about losing it, and if you don't have it, you are worried about getting sick. We need health care reform today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source