Health Care And Education Reconciliation Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. I thank the Senator from Montana for yielding.

Mr. President, my Republican colleagues have reached the conclusion that this is not a perfect bill. Well, they are right. While my problems with this bill are very different than theirs, I do hope that in the weeks and months to come, after we pass this reconciliation package, we will improve it. But I would ask my Republican colleagues to tell me something: When they controlled the White House and they controlled the Senate and they controlled the House, when President Bush was our President--during that period--7 million more Americans lost their health insurance and health care costs soared. Where were they then in talking about health care? Did they have one substantive idea during that period about how we were going to lower the cost of health care for Americans and provide health insurance for all of our people?

I do hope that after we pass reconciliation we are going to improve this bill. In that regard I want to thank Majority Leader Reid who has promised us--Senator Merkley, myself and others--that we will have the chance to vote on a public option provision. I think millions of Americans understand that public option is a choice that people should have--the right to go outside of the private insurance companies for their health insurance. That public option will provide competitive pressure on the insurance industry to control soaring health care costs. So I very much appreciate Senator Reid telling us that we are going to have a vote on that issue within a couple of months.

This bill is a strong step forward. It is no small thing that we are providing health insurance to 32 million more Americans. It is no small thing that we are moving to eliminate preexisting conditions as a grounds for rejecting someone for health care. It is no small thing that we are going to begin to fill that doughnut hole so that seniors will be able to get the prescription drugs they need in an affordable way. Those are, among other achievements, quite significant.

But having said that, after the passage of this legislation, we still have to deal with the reality that we will continue to spend far more per capita on health care than any other major country.

A few days ago, we had the Ambassador from Denmark visiting Vermont. In that country, they provide quality care for all of their people, and they do it spending about 50 percent of what we do because they have eliminated private insurance companies and all of the administrative and profiteering costs associated with private insurance companies. I hope we will one day at least allow States the option to move forward with a single-payer, Medicare-for-all program, which I think ultimately is the way we are going to go as a nation if we are going to solve the need for comprehensive universal and cost-effective health care for all of our people.

I do want to say a word on one aspect, one provision of this bill which I think is enormously important, and I am very excited it is included in this bill. Again, I thank Senator Reid for his help in making sure it remained in and is amply funded.

That is that in this legislation we are going to take a giant step forward in providing primary health care to the people of this country through a major expansion of Community Health Centers and the National Health Service Corps. This legislation provides enough funding so that we are going to create, over the next 5 years, 8,000 new health center sites, more than doubling the number that now exists. We are going to increase access for primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs by doubling the number of Americans with access to community health centers from 20 million to 40 million in every State, and in every region of this country. That is a huge step forward in providing basic health care to millions of Americans who today cannot access that care.

While we do that, we are also going to significantly expand the number of doctors, the number of nurse practitioners and dentists that we desperately need in order to provide primary health care to our people.

This legislation--over a 5-year period--triples the amount of money going into the National Health Service Corps, a program which provides debt forgiveness and scholarships for those doctors and dentists who will be serving in underserved areas throughout this country.

Through the National Health Service Corps, we are going to support an additional 17,000 new primary health care doctors, dentists, nurse practitioners, and mental health professionals. What this means is that if somebody has no health insurance, if somebody has Medicaid, if somebody has Medicare, if somebody has private health insurance, that individual is going to be able to walk into a community health center and get the high quality care they need. The incredible thing, and this is quite remarkable, is that by doing this we are going to actually save taxpayers money because we are going to keep people out of the emergency room, which is the most expensive form of primary health care; we are going to prevent people from becoming sicker than they should and ending up in the hospital at great expense. Based on a study by the Geiger-Gibson Program at George Washington University, it is conservatively estimated that, by investing $12.5 billion in health centers and the National Health Service Corps, we will save Medicaid alone over $17 billion over the next 5 years.

This legislation is going to be very significant in providing the primary health care that we need as a nation, and I am very appreciative it is part of the bill.

Mr. President, as I conclude, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the findings of the study by the Geiger-Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative, George Washington University, dated October 14, 2009.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD

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