Honoring Sargent Shriver and Health Care
Floor Speech
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Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir.
I don't think so. And the tide has been turning. The national polls, which I think are reflective of Tennessee at least on a percentage basis, have shown that it's gone from 10 points up on people that want to repeal this bill to where it's even, as many people for it as against it in this country. There's been a 10-point switch in the last 2 weeks as people have looked at the possibilities of the repeal of the law and seen the benefit.
What I thought about, Mr. Garamendi, I was in New York, New York City, about 2 weeks ago, and I went in the Time Warner Building. They had an exhibit there of Salvador Dali; surreal, things looking out of space. Strange, strange pictures and thoughts. It's hard to think of this Congress and the Republican majority that's come in trying to repeal a bill that's going to become as popular, once it gets implemented, as Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare have over the years, that they are so out of touch with America today and its needs and the future. Because while this may seem to be important to the minority, the tail wagging the dog in that party, the tea party that's wagging the dog, saying repeal health care, the fact is down the line, people are going to embrace this bill like they embraced the Great Society's Medicaid and Medicare and the New Deal's Social Security. It's going to be a short-term possible victory but a long-term defeat. And the myopia of the other side, let alone the hypocrisy of some of its members, is hard to fathom. But you can only see it through the eyes of Salvador Dali, because obviously they are Salvador Dali, and they're saying things in a surreal way.
The nonpartisan, bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says it's going to save us $230 billion the first decade and $1.2 trillion thereafter, and they say, ``Well, they can have their opinion.'' Those are facts. Those are nonpartisan facts of people we hire to give us the truth. They don't like the truth so they summarily dismiss it.
They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie. Just like Goebbels; you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard it on this floor; government takeover of health care.
PolitiFact, nonpartisan, Pulitzer prize-winning, 2009, St. Petersburg Times, said the biggest lie of 2010 was government takeover of health care, because there is no government takeover. It's insurance.
I look at my Facebook regularly and I've got some people I communicate with on different issues on Facebook. I respond to them whether they take my side or not, obviously. And one lady has been constantly talking negatively about health care. I responded. She keeps going on with the line that obviously she hears and she's taken as her mantra; and that is that this is a government takeover of health care. Well, she's drunken the Kool-Aid, and that's just not true.
We heard in August 2009 that there were death panels and killing grandmother. Everybody agrees now, that was a big lie; just like government takeover of health care is a big lie. And it's amazing the lies: denying the effect on the deficit, claiming it's a government takeover, claiming there were death panels.
This lady on my Facebook page talked about the fact that it was going to take insurance companies out and there was a public option. Well, there is no public option. And the exchanges aren't a public option but the exchanges are private insurance where people can come together and get better rates that they couldn't get if they were dealing as individuals on the open market.
People don't understand. If you read Paul Krugman today, or yesterday--today in Memphis, we get it a day late--but yesterday in the New York Times, he talked about the errors in arithmetic, basically the lies that are being put out about how it will affect the budget. And Krugman, who's only a Nobel prize winner, says it's just not true, and what it comes down to, the bottom line, is there is a group in America that don't feel like they have a responsibility, a social responsibility, a moral responsibility, to those 32 million Americans who can't afford health care and right now are seeing death panels, the death panels that say you won't have insurance and you won't have health care.
As we are just one day beyond Dr. Martin Luther King's holiday, America's holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. King was not only for social justice, which everybody embraces today and talks about kumbayah and integration, but it was also economic justice. And economic justice involves health care, and it involves giving everybody an opportunity to stay alive, to get educated, and to get a job.
The first priority I have always believed of government is to keep people alive, their health care. The second is to get them educated. And the third is to get them a job. This rhetoric on the other side of the aisle about whatever they want to call it is not only false--read Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner--but it is the third priority. The first thing is keeping people alive. And you want to tell those 32 million Americans we don't want you to have insurance, we don't care about you. That is wrong. Dr. King wouldn't approve of it. I don't approve of it. America won't approve of it.
And it is as I started with, surreal to think that the first thing that this Republican Congress is doing is trying to repeal what will be known down the years as one of the great acts ever passed by this United States Congress. It will be to the fortune of the Democrats because like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and voting rights and civil rights, they are Democratic initiatives that brought America forward, progressive initiatives that have been brought forth by this side of the aisle. And the myopia of the other side is politically welcomed, if not policy-wise sad.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Cohen, thank you very much. You pointed out the nature of the debate taking place on the floor. I listened to much of the debate this afternoon as it was going on, and tomorrow it is probably going to be the same. Like you, I was surprised and in many cases disappointed with the rhetoric that I heard. It simply wasn't based on fact.
They talked about the government takeover of health care. You used the word ``big lie.'' Well, in fact it is not going to happen. This is not the government takeover of health care. There are many who said we simply should take Medicare and expand it to all. Now that is a program that is government collection of the money, but the services are provided by individual doctors, hospitals, and other provider groups. It is not a government takeover; it is a government finance program.
You mentioned the uninsured. Actually, it is about 42 million uninsured in America. They get sick. Who pays for them when they go to the emergency room? They don't have an insurance policy. They are certainly not going to be able to afford the cost of an emergency room and any procedure. Those people who are uninsured do get sick. They do go to the emergency room, and they do get medical care. And who pays, the taxpayer.
Mr. COHEN. Property taxes.
Mr. GARAMENDI. In Tennessee, the property tax base. In California, the general tax base and the Federal Government. Here is the clincher: every health insurance policy in the Nation pays for the uninsured. So we have health care coverage. In fact, this law requires that the three of us and all 435 Members of Congress and 100 Members of the Senate will get the exact same kind of insurance that every American gets. We don't get a special deal. In fact, we get to pay for part of it ourselves. That is a fact.
So what about those people that are out there uninsured that get sick. We get to pay for it through our health insurance policies because that cost is shifted over to us, the taxpayer. There is no free lunch here. The question we have is should everybody participate in this insurance pool. I think it is only fair to say that we all participate.
I don't know what I said, Mr. Pallone, that made you come to your feet, but please proceed.
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Mr. COHEN. Sir, I appreciate your leading this. You have been an outstanding Member; and your first vote, I think, was for this bill. You have a lot of experience of this issue. You were commissioner of insurance, if I am correct, of the largest State in the country, California. So you have knowledge here.
Mr. Pallone worked very hard on this bill, too, as I did; but Mr. Pallone was in a senior position.
As I think back on the passage of this bill, I remember a lot of criticism; and the other side and the people who were critical said we didn't take enough time to pass the bill. We only took a year, a year and a half to pass the bill. And they are going to take 2 days to repeal it. Take enough time? Where are the people who think we should take enough time for the legislative process to work, to have hearings, to have thoughtful discussion, to have analysis of expert opinion today? Two days and it is going to be voted on, and that's it. And the old mantra which we heard from so many people, ``read the bill.'' And yet so many people think it is a government takeover of health care. I say to them: read the bill.
And people who think Congresspeople are going to get something special, we get the same as everybody else. Read the bill.
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Mr. COHEN. Well, thank you.
Today, when I came on the floor, Ms. Slaughter--one of the senior Members of this Congress, an outstanding Member and the former chairperson of the Rules Committee, now the ranking member--told me of a Member on the other side, a Member in her fourth term--I guess it was in the Rules Committee, but it might have been on the floor--who expressed for the first time astonishment, amazement, that the insurance provided for Members of Congress was subsidized by the Federal Government. She had no idea it was subsidized. She hasn't read the bill. She doesn't even know what her policy is and what her benefits are.
The fact is people should want for others what they want for themselves. I don't have Federal congressional insurance--I don't have it--but nearly everybody else in this Chamber does. Yet they don't want their constituents to have it. Now that's hypocrisy.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Last week, on this floor, many of us tried to put an amendment on this piece of legislation that would read: If the repeal occurs, then every Member of Congress would lose his health care, keeping in mind that 31 million Americans will not have health insurance if the repeal takes place.
So, 435 of us. If the bill is repealed, we should join the 31 million Americans who will not have health insurance if the bill is repealed. It seems to be the least we could do. If we want to harm 31 million Americans, if we want to take away the insurance from 31 million Americans, then, surely, 435 of us should be willing to go without insurance also. It turns out that not one Republican voted for that amendment. I wonder why. They want something that they are going to deny to 31 million Americans.
Mr. COHEN. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander. There but for the grace of God go I. You should care about your brother and your sister.
And this is going to be repealed in the same week as Dr. King's holiday?
I mean, I know it took a while for Dr. King's holiday to come about. It was John Conyers' steadfastness for 15 years to make it become law, and even then there were people in this House who voted against it, and there were people in the Senate who voted against it, but there is nobody who has given a better philosophy of life over 2,000 years than Dr. King.
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Mr. COHEN. Well, there are so many problems.
I represent an urban district in Memphis, and we do have a lack of health care in the urban areas. We need more primary care doctors, and we also need more community health centers. That's something else the bill is going to provide for, more community health centers. There are large areas in my community where there are very few doctors who are available and where there are not community health centers. So that's another portion. It's not just the primary care doctors who are so important--and we've got some of the greatest in Memphis--but it's the difficulty in not having community health centers.
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Mr. COHEN. Well, just the idea--and I will yield to Ms. Jackson Lee in just a second--but the idea of having medical records on computers rather than having them on notes. My father was a doctor. I inherited his penmanship. I got a C in penmanship. The teacher was kind to me.
Doctors don't write real well. If you have to go from written records, it's difficult, and they don't get transposed well. But if you have them on computers, it's very easy to see what shots and inoculations the patient has had in the past, what treatments they've had. It makes it easier to render a diagnosis and not have to repeat tests that are unnecessary and costly. It is so important. And part of this bill is to see to it that the records are put on electronic devices so that they're available throughout the Worldwide Web and everywhere. That saves medical costs in the long run.
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