Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, my colleagues and I have come to the floor to talk about an issue that is at the heart of the discussion of our national debt and deficit; that is, health care spending.

These days around Washington, there is a regular refrain echoing through the hallways: In order to fix our deficit, we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. That is wrong. That idea is, according to the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente--somebody who knows a little something about health care--and I will quote him:

..... so wrong it's almost criminal. It's an inept way of thinking about health care.

I could not agree more.

It was put this way by Froma Harrop, who is a columnist for my hometown paper, the Providence Journal. I will quote her: ``The dagger pointed at America's economic viability hasn't been the existence of government programs like Medicare, it's been the relentless rise in health care costs that plagues not only Medicare and Medicaid, but everyone who uses health care.''

Attacking Medicare and Medicaid ignores the fact that our health care spending problem is systemwide and not just unique to Federal programs. Our colleague Senator Angus King has used the colorful metaphor that to go after Medicare and Medicaid when the problem is our health care system would be like attacking Brazil after Pearl Harbor--wrong target. It ignores the fact that we operate a widely inefficient health care system: 18 percent of our GDP compared to only 12 percent for our least efficient international competitors.

So how can we continue to stem the rise in costs and improve our wildly inefficient health care system?

Thankfully, many of the tools necessary to drive down costs have an interesting collateral benefit. They actually improve the quality of care for patients. The Affordable Care Act included 45 different provisions dedicated to redesigning how health care is delivered for the benefit of patients and taxpayers. These reforms support and encourage an ongoing delivery system reform movement--and there truly is a movement out there--driven by dedicated providers, payers, employers, and even some States that have worked for years to improve the quality and the safety and the effectiveness of health care.

We are not discussing hypothetical improvements. We are not discussing theoretical cost savings. Today I am joined on the floor by colleagues who have seen how delivery system innovators in their States have achieved real improvements to quality, real improvements in patient outcomes, and real cost savings. In Congress, we can't get over yesterday's quarrels about repealing or defunding ObamaCare, but out there in the real world health care leaders across the country are innovating forward, places such as the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, Gundersen Lutheran in Wisconsin, Palmetto Health in the Carolinas, and in Rhode Island, among other places, our own Coastal Medical.

One Rhode Island practical example: When intensive care unit staff follow a checklist of basic instructions--washing their hands with soap, cleaning a patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes over the patient and so forth--rates of infection plummet, and the costs of treating those infections disappear--no infection, no cost.

These reforms have the triple benefit of protecting Medicare and Medicaid, improving patient outcomes, and dialing back health care spending for all Americans. How big is it? The President's Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that we could save approximately $700 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--$700 billion every year--every year--in our health care system without compromising health outcomes. The Institute of Medicine took a look at the same question. They put the savings number at $750 billion.

Other groups are even more optimistic. The New England Health Care Institute has reported that $850 billion could be saved annually. The Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill--who as the CEO of Alcoa is deeply involved in the reform efforts in Pennsylvania that have been very successful and knows a fair amount about this--they estimate an annual savings of a staggering $1 trillion.

Whatever the exact number is, what is clear is there is huge potential for savings in our health care system while improving or maintaining the quality of care. Since the Federal Government does 40 percent of America's health care spending, when we get that right, taxpayers as well as patients become big winners from these reforms.

I will close with two points: First, many of us are asking the Obama administration to set a hard cost savings target for these delivery system reform efforts. It may be $750 billion. Pick a number that will be a target to be actually achieved. A target--a measurable goal--will focus and guide and spur the administration's reform efforts in a manner that vague intentions to ``bend the health care cost curve'' simply cannot.

Second, we need to put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving that serious cost savings target for our Nation's health care system. It is hard to do that without that target to strive toward.

This is an issue where our Republican colleagues should be able to join us to accelerate these reforms in our health care delivery system and to move forward beyond tired-out calls to repeal ObamaCare so we can deal with the ongoing reality of health care reform.

Let's give American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency, poor outcomes and missed opportunities, let's give them a health care system that is the envy of the world.

I yield for my colleague, Senator Baldwin.

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