Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Well, Mr. President, that is exactly what I am hearing at home from Wyoming's voters and from my patients. I was in Wyoming this past weekend. I have had the privilege of practicing medicine there for 25 years, taking care of families in Wyoming. When I talk to people, their concerns are the national concerns the Senator from Kansas has just mentioned--the debt and what our Nation is facing long term. But they are also very focused on their own personal care. If you have a town meeting or just talk to people at the coffee shop, the people of America believe that if this bill passes, the quality of their own personal health care will go down; that their opportunity to go to the doctor they have enjoyed a relationship with for years, where they know them and they know their family, may be gone.

We are also seeing that health care providers all across the country--even the Mayo Clinic--are saying this bill is a huge lost opportunity. It was supposed to be designed to help get the cost of care down, and it is not doing that. It is going to raise the cost of care. It was designed to improve the quality of care, but it is going to cost people the quality of their own health care. That is why Americans don't like this bill. They do not like anything about it.

The Mayo Clinic was used early on by the President in this debate as the model for how we should have health care in this country. The Mayo Clinic has said ``no thank you'' to patients on Medicare in Arizona, ``no thank you'' to patients on Medicaid. Yet the President plans to push this program through. He says he is going to provide coverage for more Americans, and he is going to do it by putting 15 million more people on Medicaid--a program that many doctors won't see because the reimbursement is so low. If all a provider saw were Medicare patients, they couldn't afford to keep their doors open--not at the hospital or the clinic. And we are hearing that from hospitals and doctors across the country. That is why the Mayo Clinic said: No thank you, Mr. President. We can't take those patients, whether it is Medicare or Medicaid.

This bill will cut Medicare--the program our seniors depend upon--by $500 billion for patients who depend on Medicare. It cuts Medicare Advantage, and that program is an advantage, and the reason people signed up for it is because it provides preventive care and coordinated care. But it is not just that; there will be $135 billion in cuts to hospitals in all our States and communities, $42 billion to home health agencies. These are the folks who help provide a lifeline for people who are at home, and it saves money by keeping them out of the hospital. There are cuts to nursing homes, to hospice providers--providing services to people in the final days of their lives. That is why the American people are offended that this bill is being crammed through.

I see we have the former Governor of Nebraska here on the floor, who has experienced these issues with Medicaid, with Medicare, and with nursing homes. So I would ask my friend and colleague whether this the same thing he is hearing at home in Nebraska.

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Mr. BARRASSO. I heard that just this morning. We had a number of county commissioners from Wyoming here in Washington. They were at a speech yesterday given by Speaker of the House NANCY Pelosi, and she told these county commissioners, this group from all around the country, we need to first pass the bill so then later the American people will know what is in it. She said this to them and they laughed. They laughed at the Speaker of the House at this meeting yesterday because these are county commissioners. They know they are not going to vote on something the people in the community don't know about. The people in the community come, they want to know what is going to be discussed and then voted on.

The people of America do not know what is in this bill. They know this bill is going to raise taxes by $500 billion. They know this bill is going to cut Medicare for our seniors who depend upon Medicare by another $500 billion. They know they are going to be paying for this thing for 10 years, but there are only 6 years of services. It is amazing how much the people of America know about the gimmicks of this bill that, in fact, those who are pushing the bill wish they didn't know.

That is why three out of four Americans say stop. A quarter of them say stop, a quarter of them say stop and start over, and only a quarter of them support what is happening here.

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