Restoring American Finacial Stability Act of 2010
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today--and the Republican leader has already addressed this body--to discuss the issues of health care, about new revelations, new information that has come forth in terms of the specifics of the costs of the health care bill that has been signed into law--the costs that far exceed what was ever anticipated.
I come here as somebody who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for 25 years as an orthopedic surgeon, taking care of families in Wyoming, as medical director of the Wyoming Health Fairs, a program that provided low-cost health screening in Wyoming. This gave people an opportunity to take more responsibility for their own health and keep down costs of their medical care.
I come to the floor with a second opinion, as a physician--a practicing physician, taking care of patients; it is a second opinion about the health care law.
Today, I come to the floor because the goal of the health care bill was truly to improve quality and access and get the cost of care down. Those are the things I think all of the Senate wanted to have achieved.
But having seen this bill that has been passed and signed into law, I believe the bill is going to be bad for patients, bad for our providers, the nurses and doctors who take care of them, and bad for the payers--the American people, who will foot the bill for this health care bill.
I believe this bill will fundamentally, as it has been passed into law, result in higher costs for patients and in less access to care for people all across America. It is going to result in unsustainable spending, at a time when we are running record deficits.
I think about the things the President said when he was not just running for office but as President. He said: The plan I am announcing tonight--it was a joint session--will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, for our businesses, and for our government.
But in fact, the Chief Actuary for Medicare and Medicaid has said that the President was wrong. He said the cost of care will actually go up by $311 billion through 2019. And now we heard the revelation yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office that when you look at some of the things that hadn't been scored, as they say, costed out, it will add another $115 billion on top of that. The President said if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep it, ``period.'' He said the word ``period.'' He said nobody will take it away, ``period.'' No matter what, ``period.''
The CBO and the Chief Actuary said that 14 million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health coverage under the new law.
Today, I come to the floor to also mention that recently the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebilius, had an epiphany about the doctor shortage in America. Last week, she said a nationwide primary care physician shortage had to be addressed before over 30 million Americans get access to subsidized health insurance coverage.
This is her quote:
How are we going to be ready when we already have a shortage in too many parts of the country?
This shortage should not have been a surprise to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The American Association of Medical Colleges tells us that at the current graduation and training rates, we are facing a shortage of 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. Over the past year, medical experts warned Congress--this body--and the administration that any health reform bill should tackle the issue of physician shortages. Instead of helping doctors, the new law actually discourages the next generation from becoming doctors. This new bill cuts payments for doctors and cuts patients on Medicare, and it doesn't include enough money to train new doctors.
I believe it was intentional. Maybe the Secretary, maybe the Obama administration, and maybe the Democrats in Congress should have paid attention to the experts before jamming this health care law down the throats of the American people. Maybe they should have heeded the calls I heard from medical professionals all across Wyoming and the country to slow down, let's get it right. But, no, they didn't. And now the American people are stuck with a law that costs too much, doesn't solve America's doctor shortage--doesn't even address it--and doesn't deliver good care for patients.
This should not have been a surprise to the Secretary, because the Wall Street Journal, over a month ago, said that the medical schools can't keep up. As the ranks of the insured expand, the Nation faces a shortage of 150,000 doctors. Right here, it says a shortage of primary care and other physicians could mean more limited access to health care and longer wait times--more limited access and more wait times.
What about the training of doctors? The Secretary just realized this, but it has been in print for months. Doctors' groups and medical schools had hoped the new health care law passed in March would increase the number of funded residency slots--you know, where they train family doctors--but such a provision didn't make it into the final bill. With over a trillion dollar bill, are we going to train doctors? No, they left it out.
Then what about hospitals? Here it is in the Wall Street Journal--the headline ``Hospitals Under the Knife. New York City System Aims to Cut 2,600 More Jobs as State Funding Drops.''
Not enough doctors? All you have to do is go to the New York Times, and this headline: ``More Doctors Giving Up Private Clinics.''
That is the end of it. So why would so many doctors behave this way? Let's look at Congress Daily this past week, May 4: ``Latest CBO Figures Show Higher `Doc Fix' Price Tag.''
That is to pay doctors for the doctor bill. Of course, it was left out of the health care bill. How can we have a national health care law that fails to address training doctors and paying for them? It is astonishing. It says that scheduled cuts take effect June 1, an option outlined Friday by CBO to freeze Medicare payment rates which, under the new figures, would cost $275.8 billion through 2020. That is an amazing amount, because physician payment rates for Medicare are expected to be cut 21 percent on June 1.
That is what we are looking at now. That is why, today, I come to the floor to give, as a doctor, a second opinion, because it is time to repeal this legislation and replace it with legislation that delivers more personal responsibility and more opportunities for individual patients. We need a patient-centered health care bill, one that provides individual incentives, such as premium breaks for people who behave in a way that encourages healthy behavior and gets down the risk factors that increase the cost of care; that allows people to take their health insurance with them when they switch jobs; that gives people who buy their own health insurance the same tax relief available to people who get their insurance through work; that allows Americans to buy health insurance across State lines; that deals with lawsuit abuse and that allows small businesses to join together to offer health insurance to their employees. These are the things that will work to get down the cost of care and deliver higher quality of care to the American people.
They are not in the health care bill that passed the Senate, that passed the House, and was signed into law. That is why today, once again, in light of this brandnew information on the increased costs and the final realization that the Secretary of Health and Human Services now says: Gee, we don't have enough doctors to cover the situation, it is time to repeal this bill and replace it with what we know will work for the American people.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I agree absolutely with my colleague because that is exactly what is happening in the British health care system. It is delayed care, and delayed care, to me, equals denied care.
This has been such a major topic for discussion among the people in Britain that it was brought up in the recent debate for the prime ministership in the election, in the first televised debate ever. One of the questions that was asked of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown was what about the National Health Service; people have to wait too long. Here is the quote. We have a transcript because I read about this in the local papers and got the transcript. He talked about people with cancer.
Now, this is very important to me, Mr. President, because my wife Bobbi is a breast cancer survivor. She was diagnosed in her forties as a result of a screening mammogram. So we spend a lot of time thinking about, talking about cancer, as do many families in this country.
Well, this is what he said about people who have cancer. This is Gordon Brown answering the question, what about the National Health Service and the long delayed time before treatment.
He said, ``They will also be able to know that their operation will be in 18 weeks.'' Mr. President, 18 weeks, if you are a cancer patient in need of an operation--18 weeks for your cancer operation. That is what the Prime Minister of England is promising the people as an aspirational goal. It makes you wonder how long is the delay right now.
So it is no surprise that the British medical journal, the Lancet Oncology, in their August 2008 summary of statistics, says in every category Americans survive cancer at higher rates than patients in other developed countries. American cancer patients have a higher survival rate for every major form of cancer than patients in Canada and Britain. American women have a 35-percent better chance of surviving colon cancer than British women. American men have an 80-percent better survival rate for prostate cancer. I have a list, cancer by cancer--breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer--and the survival rates are much better in the United States than they are in Britain. It is not that our doctors are any better, it is that the treatment is more timely.
Imagine, Mr. President, being diagnosed with cancer and being told that your operation will be coming in September. Here we are in May, so 18 weeks from now--September--is when you will have your operation. All of that time the cancer can be growing. The cancer can be spreading.
As a patient in the United States, you may say: Do I really want Dr. Berwick? Do I want somebody who favors the National Health Service of Britain, someone who says they have incredible respect for the way it works and thinks it is the right way to go? Would an American citizen want that person to be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for this country?
So I just have to respond to my colleague that, as a physician who has practiced for 25 years, and as a husband of a wife who is a breast cancer survivor--who has had detection through a screening mammogram and then very rapid surgery, where there actually was the spread of the cancer from the breast to one of her lymph nodes--I think she is alive today because of the screening mammogram and the timeliness--the timeliness--of her surgery and treatment in the United States.
I see the minority leader, and I see he is incredulous that we would be considering that sort of a system and that sort of a director for Medicare and Medicaid in this country.
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Mr. BARRASSO. My take is that it wouldn't work for Wyoming. But this entire health care bill--law, travesty--isn't going to work for Wyoming. We look at the numbers, and the Congressional Budget Office says 15 percent of hospitals in a few years are going to find they are losing money and they can't stay open. People are going to have to travel long distances, very long distances, to get quality care. Sometimes with weather and with winter, it is very difficult. So I have lots of concerns for all of the rural communities in this country because we have somebody from Boston, or the big city, who doesn't think the way we do in Wyoming or Kentucky or in Kansas.
The other travesty of this is that the President of the United States has been in office now for well over a year--almost a year and a half--and it is only just now he has nominated someone to be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. I have continued to ask on this floor why that is. Why has the President intentionally refused to send a name to the Senate to be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid at a time when this country was debating health care legislation; at a time when the President was proposing cutting $550 billion from our seniors on Medicare; at a time when the President was pushing--cramming--into Medicaid another 18 million people?
Mr. McCONNELL. If my friend will yield, some have believed the reason he didn't want to send Dr. Berwick up during the health care debate is because it would confirm the obvious, which was the direction in which we were headed and which Senate Republicans said repeatedly during the debate on health care was the direction we were headed--and nobody has been more accurate on this issue than has Senator Roberts on the Finance Committee--which was massive rationing.
But it is hard to believe they had not decided to send the expert on rationing as soon as the debate was over.
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Mr. BARRASSO. It is interesting, looking at this whole thing, because what we see happening in Britain right now--they call it NICE, but there is nothing nice about it--National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence--what Dr. Berwick has had to say about it is very much the opposite of what doctors who practice there have said. What he has said about this system is that:
Those organizations are functioning very well and are well respected by clinicians, and they are making their populations healthier and better off.
But a London colon cancer specialist says:
A lot of my colleagues also face pressure from managers--
Managers in the British health system--
not to tell patients about new drugs. There is nothing in writing, [he says] but telling patients opens a Pandora's box for health services trying to contain costs.
So it gets down to not quality of care, not availability of care but the cost of care.
Dr. Berwick says NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable and--importantly--knowledge-building system.
This is what--someone--says:
Doctors are keeping cancer patients in the dark .....
These are specialists, polled by Myeloma, United Kingdom:
Doctors are keeping cancer patients in the dark about expensive new drugs that could extend their lives. .....
So let's keep people in the dark rather than tell them what is there that can help extend or save their life. That, to me, is not a system that the American people want.
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