Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee. Although we disagree on this issue, I respect him very much. I am hoping--maybe it is a false hope--before the end of the day, he will join us and make this a truly bipartisan effort. We have tried, we have reached out to the other side of the aisle for almost one calendar year with lengthy hearings in the HELP Committee, in the Finance Committee, inviting Republican Senators to come join us.
There were times when there was kind of a tease that was going on where they would come in and offer amendments and the amendments would be adopted in the HELP Committee. I think over 100 Republican amendments were adopted. We felt they were coming our way, that we were going to have a bipartisan bill. Then the roll was called and not a single Republican Senator would vote for it.
As I stand here today, after 1 year of effort, despite three committees in the House going through markup, two committees in the Senate, despite the vote on the Senate floor, the official tally is this: Only two Republicans have voted for health care reform. One Congressman from New Orleans, LA, a Republican Congressman, voted for the House bill. One Republican Senator, Senator Snowe of Maine, voted for the Finance Committee bill to be brought from the committee. We have made a good-faith effort. We will continue to.
I salute the Senator from Wyoming who is on the floor who is the ranking member of the HELP Committee. I know he spent long, arduous allocations of time meeting and trying to find a bipartisan solution without success. But thank you for trying.
I say to the Senator from Tennessee, we would like to have your support. We would like to have your help in passing this bill and truly making it bipartisan. That is our goal, and I hope it happens.
The Senator from Tennessee questioned the fundamental building blocks of this bill. I cannot resist the opportunity to say I think this is a good bill, and I believe the effort that went into it by Senator Dodd, who has now joined us, and the HELP Committee and Senator Baucus and the Finance Committee gives us a bill that has many positive things.
This is our bill, 2,074 pages. It is the Democratic reform bill. You will see the desks on the other side of the aisle are empty because they do not have a bill. The Republicans have not produced a health care reform bill. In 1 year of speeches and press releases and charts and appearances on television talking about health care reform, they have not produced a comprehensive health care reform bill. I know why. It is hard. It is very difficult to tackle one-sixth of our economy. We did it, and it took a lot of effort, as I mentioned earlier.
Second, there are some in the Senate--not on this side of the aisle--some in the Senate who do not believe we need to change. Some accept the current system. I think if they accept it, then they have to answer a few fundamental questions about the building blocks of this amendment. If the Republican Senators who oppose our bill accept the current system, what do they have to say about the affordability of health care premiums?
We know what has happened. Health care premiums have risen dramatically. Ten years ago, a health insurance plan for a family of four was $6,000 on average. Today it is $12,000. We project in 8 years it will be $24,000. If we do not stop this, fewer and fewer Americans will have health insurance, and what they have may not be any good.
We have in this bill efforts to reduce the increase in costs in health insurance premiums. Don't take my word for it. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the official umpire, has said, yes, the vast majority of Americans will see their health insurance premiums either go down in cost or not go up as they would have.
So we address, No. 1, the affordability of health care for businesses and families across America. There is no Republican bill that does this.
Secondly, the provisions in this bill will extend protection of health insurance so that 94 percent of Americans will have the peace of mind of knowing they have health insurance. Thirty million more Americans uninsured today will have health insurance. Of the lowest income categories, some will qualify for Medicaid, the government program for the poor and disabled, and in other instances some will qualify for the health insurance program, but they will have protection--30 million more Americans. There is no Republican bill or amendment that extends coverage of health insurance to 30 million more Americans. There is none.
There is a third issue, too. We have built into the front end of this bill what we call the health care bill of rights. It is about time somebody stood up for families and individuals across America who have been treated very poorly by health insurance companies. These extremely profitable companies make a lot of money by saying no--saying no to your doctor's recommendation for surgery, saying no to your doctor's recommendation for the appropriate medication. They have people who just say no. But here is what our bill does. Our bill says that in America you will have the right to buy insurance if you have a preexisting condition.
What that basically means is the No. 1 reason that health insurance companies deny coverage today is going to come to an end. We are creating new risk pools where preexisting conditions cannot exclude you. I know everyone is concerned about that critical moment in time when there is a frightening diagnosis or a terrible accident that they will turn to their health insurance they have paid into for a lifetime and the company will say: No. We checked your application and you failed to disclose something about your past medical history--such as acne. Incidentally, that was one of the reasons used to refuse coverage. So the first thing we do is make sure that Americans have the right to buy insurance and won't be excluded for preexisting conditions.
We also make sure you will be able to keep your insurance if you become sick or injured. Too many times when you get sick, your insurance fails you. Two out of three people filing for bankruptcy in America today file because of medical bills they can't pay--two out of three. And 74 percent of them had health insurance. They thought they had protection--they paid the premiums--but when they needed it, it wasn't there. So the No. 2 element in our health care bill of rights in this bill is that you can keep your insurance if you become sick or injured, that your insurance won't face lifetime limits on coverage, and that you will have affordable insurance if you lose or change your job. That is a large portion of the uninsured people in America.
Here is one that parents will appreciate. Remember when you first learned when your family policy wouldn't cover your son or daughter, right as they were coming out of college? And you thought: Uh-oh, they are loaded with student debt, they are looking for a job, and now they don't have health insurance. I can't tell you how many times I called my daughter and said: Jennifer, have you got health insurance yet? Oh, yeah, dad, I will get to that soon. I didn't like to hear that. Parents don't like to hear that. Well, we extend them from age 24, and we say they can stay on their parents' insurance policy until they are 27. That is an addition of several years of protection--peace of mind--while a young person goes about finding a job, starting a career, and starting a family.
We also provide preventive care without extra cost, and we also begin to eliminate the discrimination in health insurance premiums. Health insurance companies--insurance companies in general and health insurance companies--are the only business, save American baseball, that is exempt from antitrust laws, which means they can literally come together--the executives of the insurance companies--and decide how much to charge in premiums for women, the elderly, people who are members of a minority group, and they can make those distinctions and do it legally. We put an end to that. We say you have a right to fair insurance premiums without discrimination based on gender, health history, family history, or occupation.
There has not been a single Republican bill offered that offers this patients bill of rights to make sure we have this kind of protection when it comes to health insurance. It is one of the fundamental building blocks when it comes to health care reform in America.
The Senator from Tennessee and others have raised the question about deficits and have said: Well, isn't this bill, for all that it seeks to do, going to add more expense to our deficit? That was a legitimate question, asked by President Obama when he told us: If you want to do health care reform, don't do it at the expense of adding to our debt as a nation.
When we passed the prescription drug bill under Medicare--when there was a different party in charge in the Senate and in the White House--they added $400 billion to the deficit and didn't blink--$400 billion in debt added to America with impunity. It meant more subsidies for pharmaceutical companies--which do quite well--and more subsidies for health insurance companies--which are very profitable--at the expense of our deficit.
Now when it comes to this bill, that same party has returned to its role as the deficit hawk. Well, they should look very carefully at this bill, because the Congressional Budget Office tells us this legislation will reduce the deficit of the United States by $130 billion over the next 10 years, and in the following 10 years there will be $650 billion in reduced deficit. That is almost $1 trillion in deficit savings over 20 years.
There is no bill that has ever been introduced that makes this kind of deficit savings, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And unfortunately for their argument, there is not a single bill before us on the Republican side of the aisle which would even come close to reducing the deficit in that regard. In fact, all the major amendments that have been offered so far on the Republican side of the aisle add to our deficit. They want to continue the subsidy for private health insurance companies under a program called Medicare Advantage.
The Senator from Connecticut has said repeatedly--and I hope he will say again soon--that Medicare Advantage is neither Medicare nor an advantage. It is a subsidy from taxpayers to profitable health insurance companies, which the Republican side of the aisle has labored day after day to protect--a private subsidy to health insurance companies. The health insurance companies can't stand this bill because it upsets their apple cart and maybe their profit and loss statement, and they can't stand the thought of having Medicare Advantage policies held to accountability or losing the subsidy they currently have. But we believe that if we are honest with Medicare and its future, we have to do that.
I want to address one issue that comes up every time my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stand to speak, and it is the issue of the future of Medicare. They fail to recall that Senator Corker, from Tennessee, Senator Dodd, myself, and the Presiding Officer all voted in favor of the amendment offered by Senator MICHAEL BENNET of Colorado. The amendment that he offered--which is the most bipartisan amendment we have had on this otherwise partisan bill--said nothing we do here in this bill will in any way reduce or endanger guaranteed benefits under Medicare, No. 1. And, No. 2, any savings that we get from this bill under the Medicare Program have to go back into putting Medicare on solid financial footing, to extend the benefits available to seniors, and to reduce the cost to seniors.
We all voted for that. It is now a part of the law we want to pass. So to come to the floor and argue the opposite is to ignore their own votes on the issue. Senator Bennet of Colorado has passed a watershed amendment that every senior and the families of seniors should respect as important to their future. So although you may disagree with the fundamental building blocks of this amendment, I think they are sound, I think they are responsible from a fiscal viewpoint, and they are responsible when it comes to the future of Medicare.
Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield?
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield, and I will be glad to yield the floor, if the Senator from Connecticut wants to speak.
Mr. DODD. No, no, but I certainly like these moments where we engage a little bit.
Mr. DURBIN. It is perilously close to debate here in the Senate.
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Mr. DURBIN. As a matter of fact, the Senator from Connecticut, I would say through the Chair, is quoting a study from the Congressional Budget Office requested by Senator Bayh of Indiana, who asked the straight-up question of the Congressional Budget Office: If this is passed and becomes law, what will happen to premiums to people across America? As the Senator from Connecticut correctly reports, the premiums are either going to stay the same or go down for the vast majority of people; otherwise, they are going up dramatically.
There is one other element, which I know the Senator is aware of. If you happen to be one of those callous, styptic-hearted individuals who could care less about people who are uninsured, believing the poor will always be with us, you ought to stop and reflect upon the fact that many of the poor people with no health insurance receive medical care through charity, compassionate care from hospitals and doctors, and their costs are passed along. We estimate that current premiums reflect about $1,000 to $1,200 a year that each of us pays--in addition to what we need to cover our families--to cover those uninsured who receive the benefits and the treatment they seek at hospitals.
So in addition to reducing the premiums, as the Senator from Connecticut said, as more and more people come into coverage with their own health insurance, there is less of a pull on our benefit packages to subsidize the uninsured.
Mr. DODD. One other statistic that again jumps off the page at you, and I went back to my staff and said: Are you sure these numbers are right? I am told they are correct. For people who receive tax credits--and many do under our proposal here--the premium savings, on average, are 56 to 59 percent lower relative to the current individual market premiums--56 to 59 percent lower.
That is an incredible achievement in a piece of legislation designed to deal with cost--how do you get costs down? And of course the added elements of this--which again CBO doesn't calculate in showing reductions in premiums--include catastrophic options available to young adults, reinsurance provisions, which would reduce premiums even further. None of those calculations were actually calibrated by CBO in arriving at their conclusion. So, actually, I think these numbers turn out to be far better than the ones we have just talked about.
Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from Connecticut, this affordability element is the No. 1 reason why we need health care reform, and I think the one reason why our critics on the other side of the aisle come to this debate emptyhanded. They don't have anything to offer to reduce the costs. We are looking for a comprehensive bill from the Republican side.
This is ours, and it has been on the Internet for over 2 weeks. Every word can be read by every person in America. That kind of transparency and disclosure is what we need in the course of this debate. I am sorry the other side doesn't offer an alternative but does offer, unfortunately, amendments which don't enhance this bill's goals.
Mr. DODD. If I could get a last minute on the floor, Mr. President, I commend Senator MARK PRYOR, our colleague from Arkansas, whose amendment we will vote on shortly. I commend him for his work. This is a very worthwhile amendment he is offering, and gives individuals and small businesses better and more consistent information about insurance plans that would be sold in the exchange. All of us in this Chamber, and every Federal employee, gets one of these.
This is a little booklet. What it says is: ``Guide to Federal Benefits.'' I think I get some 15 or 20 options this year. I get options--take a look. I can open this book to various pages, and there is a comparative analysis of consumer reactions to the various plans over the last year or so, what they thought of them, how well they worked. There is nothing similar to this. We put language in our bill out of the HELP Committee to try to put this in common language people can understand, getting away from the small print, telling people what exactly will be the benefits under their plan, or the disadvantages, to some degree. The Pryor amendment includes this kind of provision in the bill and strengthens it tremendously. I commend Senator Pryor of Arkansas for including a provision in this bill that will provide greater clarity and greater understanding, the same kind of clarity we get under the Federal Employees Health Benefits package that allows us to make that very simple. You don't have to have a Ph.D. in economics to understand this. You can go right through and they list it quickly, if it is only yourself, yourself and your family, what it is like in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, every State. It is a very simple, very clear understanding of how this works.
One of the complaints all of us get all the time, this is complicated. No matter how sophisticated you may think you are, trying to sort out what is the best plan for you--and I say this candidly, the insurance industry isn't always as forthcoming in letting you know what the disadvantages are as they are marketing their various plans to people. So the Pryor amendment, I think, will go a long way toward providing that kind of clarity and understanding that all Americans want. I urge my colleagues to support the Pryor amendment when that issue comes up for a vote.
I see the time is 3. I inquire and see I have gone over a little bit past 3 o'clock. I apologize to my colleague.
Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the next half hour, between now and 3:30, be evenly divided as the time has been before and the first person recognized on the Democratic side in that slot be the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray.
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Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator from Tennessee is propounding a question, I will be opposing the Gregg amendment. I think the Bennet amendment achieves what we wanted to achieve. I think my friend from New Hampshire in his amendment goes too far and, basically, we understand what he wants to do. He doesn't want to see us create tax credits to help families pay for health insurance premiums. He believes it is an entitlement. I think your side referred to it as such. I think it is important to help businesses and individuals who are struggling to pay health insurance premiums receive some assistance in doing so.
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