A Second Opinion On Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today as someone who has practiced medicine and taken care of families in Wyoming since 1983. Again this weekend I was home in Wyoming visiting with families across the State. I was in Thermopolis for Father's Day. I was in Sheridan and in Casper. In all those communities I had a chance to visit with people who are concerned about the direction of the country and are concerned about this new health care law.

Mr. President, I tell you this because I ran into a number of people I have taken care of as their doctor. This happened at church on Sunday morning, where people asked the question: With this new health care law, will I be able to keep my doctor? So I come to you because there is more news as a result of the changes in the health care law in this country. I bring to you my doctor's second opinion as to what the impact of this health care law is going to be on the families across the country.

Specifically, at church, I was hearing from someone I operated on and somebody on Medicare, and they were saying: Am I going to keep my doctor under Medicare? These people have a right to be concerned. It is because of what has come out in this past week. It is a front-page article, USA TODAY: ``Doctors Limit New Medicare Patients.''

I have said from the beginning, as this body was debating and discussing the health care bill that has now come to be law, that I believed this was going to be bad for patients, bad for payers--the American taxpayers who have to pay for the care as well as people who pay for their individual care--and bad for providers, the nurses and doctors and hospitals that take care of all of these patients.

So I come to you with a second opinion because I think what has become law--a bill that cuts Medicare, cuts payment for our seniors on Medicare by $ 1/2 trillion--not to help seniors, not to help save Medicare, but to start a whole new government program for other people is resulting in devastating impacts for families all around the country who are on Medicare or will soon be on Medicare.

One of the interesting things about this article in USA TODAY--this was Monday's USA TODAY--there is a list, a table of the number of people who are currently on Medicare and who will be on Medicare by the year 2015 and will be on Medicare by the year 2020. What we are seeing is, as Americans are living longer due to advances in medicine, advances in technology--people are living longer--more and more people every day are turning Medicare age, so the number of people on Medicare continues to grow.

As a matter of fact, if you do the math, there are over 4,000 Americans every day being added to the Medicare ranks. That is almost 1.5 million Americans a year. The question is, Who will the doctors be? Where will the health care providers come from to take care of these people? It is fascinating, when you read the article and you see the complete disconnect between Washington and the reality of the rest of America.

Because, according to this article, the people from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services say 97 percent of doctors accept Medicare, so do not worry. That is what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid say.

The American Medical Association says 17 percent of over 9,000 doctors who were surveyed are actually restricting the number of Medicare patients in their practice. Among primary care doctors--which is key for our seniors to be able to see primary care doctors--31 percent of primary care doctors are restricting access to Medicare patients. Just since the first of the year in North Carolina, 117 doctors have opted out of Medicare. That does not include the ones who had opted out before. We are talking since January 1, 117 doctors in North Carolina have opted out of Medicare.

In Illinois, in the President's home State, 18 percent of doctors restrict the number of Medicare patients in their practice. In New York State, about 1,100 doctors have left Medicare. Even the president of the Medical Society of New York is not taking new Medicare patients. No new Medicare patients. You say: Why are these physicians no longer taking Medicare patients? It has to do a lot with the way Washington deals with Medicare patients, Medicare and the doctors around the country.

At this point, there is going to be a cut of 21 percent in what Medicare pays doctors for services they give. Prior to that, Medicare always has been kind of a deadbeat payor when it comes to paying for health care. Medicare has not kept up with medical inflation in this country. So as physicians, it is a challenge to take care of patients on Medicare. With 4,000 new people joining the ranks of Medicare on a daily basis, who will care for those people?

You can imagine, I was fairly surprised when the President of the United States yesterday visited with a number of people at the White House. He put out remarks printed from the White House and talked about what his new plan does. He says Americans--this is astonishing. The President of the United States said yesterday: Americans will be able to keep the primary care doctor or pediatrician they choose. He says these protections preserve America's choice of doctors.

What happens if your doctor cannot afford to keep you? We have the President of the United States, for well over a year, making statements just like the one he made a year ago: If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. That is what the President said. He said: No one will take it away. Period. No matter what. Period.

Yet here we are looking at the facts. Doctors are limiting new Medicare patients, and 4,000 new patients every day are joining the Medicare rolls looking for doctors. We see it all across the United States.

That is why the public remains very skeptical about this new health care law, and why 58 percent of Americans want this law repealed. That is why the American people, when they heard Nancy Pelosi say: We have to pass the bill before you get to find out what is in it, why the American people who are now finding out what is in it are very distressed. They were hoping to take the President at his word when he said he was trying to lower costs and improve quality and increase access to care.

But this body did not pass into law, nor did the House, a reform package that will do those things the American people had wanted, had asked for, and had heard from their President they would get--something that would lower costs, improve quality, and increase access to care. What the American people are seeing is the cost of their care is going to continue to go up, and the quality and the availability is likely to go down. That is not what the American people asked for in this health care law. That is why so many Americans are opposed to it. I talked with people all across Wyoming, and they think of what the impact is going to be on their own lives and their own family. People all across this country are worried for their own health care, that they are going to end up paying more and getting less. That is why the public remains very skeptical about what has been passed into law.

Twenty States have filed suit against the Federal Government because of a national mandate that people have to buy insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services, which says 97 percent of doctors are still taking care of Medicare patients, there actually has been a new nominee to take care of that Department. We have not yet had hearings in the Senate. We have not been able to ask those specific questions of that nominee: What about taking care of these patients? How will they find doctors under this new law and this new plan?

Here we are, 90 days after the health care law has been enacted, signed into law, 90 days ago this became law. The White House is holding press conferences and again repeating promises to the American people that the American people know have been broken. There is a litany of broken promises. It just seems that every week something new comes out that the American people look at and say: You know, it is amazing because we saw this coming. Yet this Congress, this Senate, jammed through a bill that is not going to provide better coverage. It is going to jam 16 million more people onto Medicaid--16 million more onto Medicaid. We know that almost half of the doctors in the country do not take Medicaid patients.

Now we are seeing more and more physicians and hospitals saying: How do we keep the doors open with what Medicare is paying? As fewer and fewer physicians are willing to take care of patients on Medicare, limiting their practice on Medicare and on Medicaid, and Congress now stymied with what is known as the doc fix, huge cuts in additional reimbursement to doctors who take care of our seniors, it is going to be increasingly difficult for the American people to be able to find a doctor.

That is why I come to the floor with my second opinion about this health care law, telling you it is time to repeal this legislation and replace it with legislation that delivers more patient-centered solutions, delivers more personal responsibility, more opportunities for individuals to take control of their own health and their own care, which is what I tried to do as the medical director of the Wyoming Health Fairs: give people information they could use to keep healthy and drive down the cost of their care.

Half of all the money we spend on health care in this country is on just 5 percent of the people. There are patient-based solutions: allowing people to buy insurance across State lines, giving individuals who buy their own health insurance personally the same tax relief the large companies get when they pay for health insurance, deal with lawsuit abuse, allow small businesses to join together to lower the cost of insurance, and provide individual incentives for people who do take personal responsibility for their own health.

Those are the things that will actually help get down the cost of care. Those are the things that will help Americans stay healthy. But they are not in this health care law that has been passed by the House, passed by the Senate, and signed by the President. That is why I come to the floor this week, as I have week after week since the law has been signed, to offer my second opinion; and that opinion is, it is time to repeal and replace this health care law with a law that will work for the American people.

I yield the floor.

Source