[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 8 (Thursday, February 3, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           HEALTH CARE CRISIS

  Mr. RIEGLE. Madam President, following my good friend and colleague, 
the Senator from Arkansas, I want to now address some remarks to the 
health care problem facing our country. I do so because there is a 
clear issue that is before us. It is an urgent matter, and we have 
heard a lot said and have seen a lot written just in the last several 
days about it.
  Frankly, our country has been facing a health care crisis now for 
many years. Based upon my own experience from holding now over 40 
public hearings on the issue of health care reform and, in the course 
of doing those hearings, testimony from hundreds of individuals, I can 
state on the Senate floor that a crisis does exist and that we must 
pass comprehensive health care reform and we must pass it this year.
  I am pleased that we finally have a President and a First Lady who 
have brought this issue to the forefront and who are leading the effort 
to deal with it.
  As this debate goes forward, I think we have to stay focused on why 
we need reform. We have to stay focused on real people who are everyday 
being hurt by the problems in our health care system and who cannot 
solve those problems by themselves and who need our help.
  The number of Americans that did not have health insurance sometime 
during the year of 1992 is said to be 38.5 million people. Of that 
number, 24 million did not have any health insurance coverage at any 
time during that year.
  Millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage 
through their employer simply cannot afford to buy private insurance on 
their own. It is just too expensive and it becomes more expensive 
everyday.
  Let me tell you the case of Veronica McClellan who lives in Westland, 
MI, who cannot afford to buy health care insurance. Veronica is a 55-
year-old widow who had never worked outside her home. Sadly, her 
husband died this last year, leaving her with no income and no health 
insurance.
  Veronica is not eligible for Medicaid because she does not meet the 
eligibility criteria which generally require that a single woman be 
very disabled or on welfare. She is also not old enough to be eligible 
for Medicare.

  Last year, Veronica was diagnosed with breast cancer, and just last 
month she underwent a complete mastectomy. But she has no income or 
health insurance to pay for the cost of this surgery which she needed 
literally to save her life.
  The bill for her hospitalization is so far beyond her means that 
right now she does not even know how much the final cost will be, how 
many multiples of thousands and probably tens of thousands of dollars 
that it will be. She knows, moreover, that she cannot afford to go to a 
physician for the kind of proper followup care that she should get 
after major surgery because of the cost involved there, and again no 
health insurance in place.
  Without health insurance or outside income, she has had to rely upon 
her daughter to pay all of her medical bills, and this, of course, has 
become an enormous strain on her daughter.
  Many more of those who lack insurance are unable to get insurance 
simply because they need it. They cannot buy insurance even if they 
have the money. Our current system allows people who need coverage the 
most to be denied the health insurance coverage because of what the 
insurance companies call preexisting conditions.
  Last October, I told the Senate about Joan Kachadourian from 
Gibraltar, MI. Joan can no longer work because of a heart condition. 
Her husband, Lesley, does work but his company does not offer health 
insurance. Joan has been denied health care coverage by insurers 
because of her preexisting health condition. So the simple fact is she 
cannot get the insurance precisely because she needs it. She needs it 
and therefore she cannot have it. Unfortunately, her condition is 
getting worse because she cannot afford the treatment.
  That should not happen in this country, and that is a crisis for her. 
It is a crisis for countless thousands, tens of thousands of other 
people like her across this country. They are waiting for action. They 
are waiting for action by us, and they deserve to have action taken.
  The health care crisis is also hurting American businesses because of 
the skyrocketing premiums that they are paying to cover their 
employees. Health care costs to businesses are rising an average of 15 
percent each year. Some large companies such as the auto manufacturers 
in my home State of Michigan are hurt even more because they have on 
average an older work force with greater health care needs and because 
they also pay the health coverage for their early retirees until they 
reach the age of Medicare.
  Small businesses are hurt because they have to pay significantly 
higher rates for the same coverage, and their rates go up even if just 
one employee should get sick and file a claim.
  I took the Senate floor before to give an example of a small business 
owner who was being crippled by health care costs. I described that 
last summer. Douglas Erwin owns a small fruit and vegetable market in 
Novi, MI. He has 15 employees and provides coverage for his full-time 
workers and their families. Douglas provides insurance because he 
understands how important the coverage is. Two of his own sons have had 
very expensive health problems. But his costs of providing that 
coverage has doubled over the past 5 years. In 1988, his business had a 
profit margin of $39,000, and that was after a year of very hard work. 
But last year his profits were only $5,000 because his health care 
costs had risen so high. Small businesses like this cannot afford to 
keep paying these exorbitant costs and hope to stay in business.
  So it is a crisis for him as well as many other small business owners 
across the country who are trying their best to provide health 
insurance for their workers.
  So we have to reform our health care system because of the lack of 
security and the high costs of our present system, and that is hurting 
everyone in the end. As I say, we have to do it this year.
  I have cosponsored President Clinton's reform plan because I believe 
it establishes the right goals. I do not say that it is perfect in 
every respect, nor does he. We will make changes in it as we go along. 
But that bill would make certain that everybody in this country had 
coverage, that it was coverage they could afford and it would never be 
taken away. It would mean people like Veronica McClellan, instead of 
now being in this terrible situation, would have some economic security 
with her health problems. And Joan Kachadourian the same thing; she 
would have the security of guaranteed health coverage that she needs 
and I think deserves to have, and it would control the costs of 
businesses providing coverage to their workers. So I am going to do 
everything I can this year as the chairman of the health care 
subcommittee for families and the uninsured on the Finance Committee to 
see this gets done.
  I wish to add one other comment.
  I have noticed, as have others, in the last 2 days some of the 
business organizations in the country that have come out against the 
President's plan--I was very disappointed to see that--the chamber of 
commerce today, the Business Round Table yesterday.
  Frankly, I think a mistake in strategy was made in allowing the NAFTA 
proposition to go forward ahead of health care reform. Now, I happened 
to be on the other side of the NAFTA issue. I thought it was a mistake 
then, and I think it is a mistake now. I think future events will prove 
that to be so. Nevertheless, the administration was very much in 
support of NAFTA.
  But I think by giving that issue to the business community, which 
wanted it very much, a top priority of the business community because 
they saw it as a way to make money in many cases by moving jobs to 
Mexico, despite claims to the contrary, but once they got the dessert, 
then all of a sudden they did not want to have to eat the spinach which 
is required to do serious health care reform with the kinds of cost 
controls that could work.
  The fact that those things were put in the wrong order is nothing we 
can change now, but there is a powerful lesson there, and it ought not 
to be lost on anybody who is thinking about how to sequence these 
legislative items. We should have taken health care first, and after 
health care then we could have dealt with NAFTA. I think I can, based 
on the logic and the common sense of it, pretty much guarantee that we 
would have had a lot more people out of the business community if 
health care had come first with the prospect of NAFTA coming second 
than having done it the other way around. It is too late to change that 
now except to draw a lesson from it so that we do not make that kind of 
mistake again in the future.
  I thank the Chair. I thank my colleagues. That completes my statement 
on this issue.

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