Health Care
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOEVEN. I thank Senator Johanns. It is good to be with him. Also, to Senator Lamar Alexander from the great State of Tennessee, it is great to be with him as well. We share, I guess, the common experience of serving as Governors and certainly bring that perspective to our work in the Senate.
As Senator Alexander just said, there is no question ObamaCare is making the health care challenge in the United States worse, is making it worse. We have to find a way to empower our people. In our roles as Governors, before serving in the Senate, that is what we tried to do. When it came to Medicaid, when it came to health care, it was how do we empower our people, whether it is health care or anything else, in a way that not only makes their lives better but that makes sure we are fulfilling our responsibility as good stewards of the State's treasury on behalf of the citizens of our respective States.
Last week was the second anniversary of the Obama health care legislation--the second anniversary. The fact is, since that law was passed--and just 1 minute ago, Senator Alexander expressed some of the things he talked about when that debate was had in the Congress. But since that law was passed, over the past 2 years, Americans have become more unhappy with the legislation. The Obama health care legislation has actually become more unpopular over the last few years as time has gone by because, quite simply, Americans do not want government-run health care. Americans do not want government-run health care. That is what ObamaCare is.
Americans want to be free to choose their own health care provider, their own doctors, their own hospitals. They also want to be able to be free to choose their own health care insurance. Frankly, they are going to do a lot better job than having the Federal Government do it for them. That is just a fact. Of course, that is very much at issue now with the Supreme Court deliberations, the judicial review they are undertaking now on the constitutionality of the individual mandates in the Obama health care legislation.
Of course, the question is, Is that individual mandate constitutional? If it is, if they find that individual mandate is constitutional, then is there any limit to the government's ability to intrude into the lives of our citizens? This is a huge question. If so, what happened to the concept of limited government, which was so carefully developed by our Founding Fathers in our Constitution?
It seems to me that concept of limited government is gone. That is an incredible problem for all of us that extends far beyond health care. As former Governors, we understand the need to limit government, whether it is the local level--and the Senator was a mayor. Senator Johanns was a mayor in Lincoln, NE, before he was the Governor of Nebraska, now a Senator from Nebraska, and he understands that one of the fundamental responsibilities of a mayor, of a Governor, of a Senator is to make sure we honor the Constitution and we limit the power of government, at the local, the State, and the Federal level, to intrude into the lives of our citizens. That is exactly what our Founding Fathers were striving to do in the Constitution, the whole concept of checks and balances.
We have a legislative branch and a judicial branch and an executive branch because that creates checks and balances on the respective powers of each branch. Why? To protect our citizens, to limit the reach of government. We have a bicameral Congress, the House and the Senate, to make it harder to pass laws, not easier--to make it harder to pass laws. Again, it is to protect the people of this country.
We have the 10th amendment that reserves powers to the State not expressly provided to the Federal Government; again, to limit the power of government and protect the people of this great country. Of course, that is what we have in our Bill of Rights. That is what it is all about.
So we have ObamaCare; it raises taxes by $ 1/2 trillion. It raises taxes $500 billion. It cuts Medicare $ 1/2 trillion, $500 billion. Yet, at the same time, it places huge costs, a huge burden on the States. The CBO now estimates that over the next 10 years it will cost the States $118 billion. That is $118 billion in costs to the States who are trying to balance their budgets. They are already facing challenges in doing that, and we will put that kind of huge cost on them.
At the same time, think of what it does to our small businesses. Again, as a Governor, I know how it was in my State. I think it was true when the Senator from Nebraska was Governor and when Senator Alexander was Governor of Tennessee. We understood that job creation was job one. We had to make sure businesses were able to work effectively, to compete, and to employ people. That is the engine that drives our economy, the small businesses.
When we look at ObamaCare, we look at what it does to the States--the $118 billion over 10 years--and look at the costs it creates for small businesses and look at the confusion it creates in trying to comply with all of this. What do small businesses do? The Senator from Nebraska talked a minute ago about, OK, what does the small business do?
Well, either, A, they try to comply, and that drives up their costs or, B, they cancel their insurance and default to the government-run insurance. But it not only creates a problem for them in determining whether they are going to continue health care for their employees--and our citizens have shown they want the employer to continue doing that, and it goes to whether they hire more people.
Here we are with 8.3 percent unemployment, 13 million people looking for work, and we are going to make it harder for small businesses to put them to work because they don't know if they can comply with ObamaCare, let alone withstand the cost. That affects every single American.
We need to change the approach. That is what we are talking about today. We are talking about an approach where we can empower people to choose their own health insurance and provider, an approach that encourages competition, which will help bring costs down, giving our consumers more choice. We are here to talk about how we work with States and small businesses to reduce costs, reduce fraud, waste, and abuse.
The President of AARP, Barry Rand, estimates that $100 billion is lost annually in waste, fraud, and abuse under Medicaid. Think what our States could do on behalf of their citizens in all 50 States if we in the Congress, working with an administration that will work with us, would empower the States to go after that waste, fraud, and abuse by giving their citizens more say over their health care and by encouraging competition among insurance companies to provide more choice, access, and to go after that waste, fraud, and abuse.
There are so many things we can do, but it is not through a big, monolithic, government-run insurance program that puts costs on the States and costs on its citizens. That is what we need to change. We need to change it now.
Again, I thank Senator Alexander for being here and for his work to empower our people when it comes to health care. Also, I particularly thank Senator Johanns for calling us together to discuss this very important issue on behalf of the people of America.
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