[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 22 (Thursday, March 3, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


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

 
                         THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, just over a month ago, President 
Clinton came here to Capitol Hill not just to tell America what the 
state of the Nation is but to deliver a message to us from America in 
no uncertain terms.
  Basically, our health care system is in absolute crisis, and we here 
in Washington are expected to fix it. The American people want us to 
fix it, expect us to.
  Amazingly, there is still debate about whether we can get the job 
done. I am astounded by that. I am offended by that. I sit and observe 
in sadness as people nit-pick health care while not putting out 
comprehensive plans of their own, as the President and Mrs. Clinton 
have done.
  Madam President, there should not be any doubt about the fact of the 
crisis. Eighty-one million Americans are paying more or cannot get 
insurance, or are locked into second-rate jobs because they have what 
the insurance industry brands as a ``preexisting condition.'' Fifty-
eight million Americans lose coverage for some part of each year. 
Today, 700,000 Americans who have health insurance will lose their 
health insurance. Another 70,000 tomorrow, 70,000 did yesterday, all 
hard-working, tax-paying citizens. But they will lose their health 
insurance. It is not their fault, but their tragedy.
  One million Americans are forced to stay on welfare. We hear a lot of 
talk in this country which is antiwelfare. Well, to those who say that, 
I would say a million of those folks on welfare would not be on 
welfare, and do not want to be on welfare, but have to be on welfare 
because we have not passed universal health insurance coverage, and if 
they go to take the jobs which they have been offered and would want to 
take, they would have no health insurance in those jobs. Therefore, 
having children, they have made a moral decision that having health 
insurance coverage for their children under Medicaid is their parental 
responsibility. If everybody had health insurance, if all employers 
provided health insurance for their employees, then 1 million people 
who are on the welfare rolls would immediately disappear from the 
welfare rolls. To me, that is an amazingly wonderful prospect. But we 
cannot do that unless we pass comprehensive health care reform.

  Americans are being run ragged by health care costs. Our spending on 
health care is out of control. I have said 5,000 times in the last 5 
years that we are spending $1 trillion--it was less before--this year; 
and in less than 6 years, we will be spending $2 trillion on health 
care. That is not sustainable; everybody knows that. We have chief 
executive officers of corporations coming before our Finance Committee 
saying, ``We have excellent managed care programs in our company, we 
think; yet, we find our health costs are doubling every 6 years.''
  (Mr. CAMPBELL assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. If any one of us tried to sell this health care 
formula we have, which is to spend more and more money for less and 
less dependable care, we would be laughed right out of every 
shareholders meeting and business office in our country.
  It is mind boggling to hear anybody argue with a straight face that 
our health care system is not in crisis. Doctors do not argue that. 
Consumers do not argue that. Certain people who do not want health care 
to pass argue that. There is a lot going on for us in the health care 
system; no doubt about that. We have great doctors, wondrous 
technology, and miraculous advances--but all for fewer and fewer 
Americans. And too many who turn to our health care system come out 
physically better but financially and emotionally devastated. That is 
what is taking place in the towns, counties, and States that we are 
here to represent--the State of Colorado for the Presiding Officer, and 
this Senator in the State of West Virginia.
  Take the experience of Keith Stevens, who is a young West Virginian, 
a 21-year-old car salesman. He makes a reasonable income. Yet, he had 
to use his Christmas bonus to pay for his daughter's medical care 
because he cannot afford insurance and the company for which he works 
does not provide insurance. Yet, he earns too much for his children to 
qualify for Medicaid. So Keith would be described, I guess, as lucky 
because he did have a Christmas bonus that helped him--if you call 
spending Christmas money on doctor bills lucky.
  But that is not the point. What is important is that a hardworking 
young father, married and with children, cannot afford health insurance 
for his family when he is doing everything right, as he understands it, 
under the American system. You play by the rules, work hard, pay taxes, 
do your best with your family and your children, and our system in 
America rewards you. That is true--but not in health care. More than 
all the frightening statistics and all of the frightening stories that 
we and the Presiding Officer could lavish upon this Chamber, that is 
what is out and out wrong with our system today--that good people like 
Keith Stevens, willing to pay their fair share and play by the rules, 
are forced to worry all the time about how to get health care for their 
family.
  If you ask the American people and really want to listen to their 
answers and what they are saying, they will tell you loud and clear: 
Fix the health care system.
  Over 80 percent of Americans want the Federal Government to fix the 
health care system. Fix it because it is too costly, too undependable, 
and too laden with unfair rules in favor of big insurance companies; 
fix it because it tilts heavily against most American families; fix it 
because it is driving families and businesses to bankruptcy, and it is 
keeping parents and seniors awake at night worrying that they cannot 
afford to meet basic medical needs--and they worry with good cause--fix 
it because the country can and should do better when it comes to 
something so absolutely critical and personal and universal as health 
care.
  Doing better must mean the ability to feel secure about health care. 
We, as a nation, are the standard by which the world measures its 
prosperity and its achievement. As various countries around the world 
strive to improve themselves, we are the standard; we always have been 
as long as I have been alive, and we still are. We have universities 
that are the envy of the world. We have opportunity which is the envy 
of the world. People have come to our shores not for incidental 
reasons, but because they feel that in America they can find success 
and make themselves better.
  Our industries, Mr. President, drive the global economic engine. Yet, 
alone among modern countries, superior though we are in all economic 
manner, we cannot somehow find a way to give our citizens secure health 
care. We should not tolerate those who have made the political 
calculation that this Congress cannot stand up to special interests and 
stand up for hardworking American families in need of a strong hand to 
help them get and keep health insurance.
  Americans know the President is fighting hard to give them peace of 
mind. They do know that. They do not really know what is in the Cooper 
bill. They do not really know that there is a Cooper bill or a Chafee 
bill. The polls show that. They do know there is a Clinton bill, and 
they know that the President cares about it and that the President 
wants to make health care better. But they do not know exactly what is 
in the bill. They do not know that the changes they are demanding are 
in that bill. I happen to know that they are.
  Our people are frustrated that the information they need about the 
President's plan is being drowned out by two things, the least 
important of which is that there is a multi-million-dollar television 
commercial blitz, paid for by the insurance industry. And they are 
doing what they ought to be doing to protect their hides, but, in the 
process, they are creating enormous doubts about everything in health 
care. So that no matter what comes out from what person or political 
party, the American people are now predisposed to be doubtful about it 
actually helping their personal situation.
  Second, I think people are being confused and discouraged, because 
nobody has found a way to talk through the filter of the media, which 
treats health care and each day's events in Washington in health care 
like a horse race. They want to know who has won and who has lost. When 
I am approached by reporters, they are not asking: What is it about 
alliances that the American people need to understand? They are saying: 
So and so said yesterday that a certain percentage of American people 
have said this about American alliances and, therefore, the prospects 
of health care passing are less than they were yesterday. What do you 
have to say about that, Senator Rockefeller?
  In other words, it is an attempt to try to get some little scoop. It 
is a media filter. Most of the media does not understand health care 
itself. Some of it does. I have been astounded, as the founder of 
something called the Alliance For Health Reform--which is nonpartisan 
and backs no single health plan, but does back health care reform--by 
some of the trips I have made with my Republican colleagues to parts of 
this country, where health care reporters come before us and we give 
them a presentation, and they ask questions which basically show that 
they have no idea about what is going on in health care.
  It is sad, but it is true. That is the reason that our alliance is 
putting out enormous volumes of manuals, books, and loose-leaf binders 
which help explain to reporters what health care is about.
  Mr. President, I am going to do something in one paragraph which you 
will not think possible. I am going to explain to you, in one 
paragraph, how the President's health care plan works.
  The Clinton plan will give every American guaranteed private 
insurance that can never, ever, ever be taken away. The Clinton plan 
guarantees that it is people who will choose their health care coverage 
and their doctors, not insurance companies. The Clinton plan preserves 
Medicare, alone among other plans, and improves benefits with 
prescription drug coverage and a start on long-term care, which seniors 
and others who need long-term care--the 40 percent who are younger than 
65--long for. The Clinton plan saves money for families and businesses 
by limiting how fast premiums can rise. And, since both businesses and 
individuals benefit from the reforms and from health coverage, both 
employers and employees share the responsibility and cost of coverage.
  End of paragraph.
  We cannot go through committee meetings, hearings, and debates here 
on Capitol Hill with an excuse-a-day to put off health care reform or 
to put off another trillion dollars. It should be all too clear that 
business as usual is what has brought us to this crossroads in the 
first place. Given that, we must reform the American health care system 
and we must do it, Mr. President, this year. We cannot do it 
incrementally. We must do it all whole cloth.
  We must and we do have the political knowledge and the political 
courage to do that. Democrats on this side of the aisle, Republicans on 
that side of the aisle, underestimate--all of us--our political 
courage. We do that constantly.
  I just came from a Finance Committee hearing on benefits in which 
Senators were basically saying we cannot say ``no'' to anybody. Mr. 
President, you and I have been in public life for a while. We spend a 
whole lot of our time saying ``no'' to all kinds of people.
  Of course, there are 1,100 health care trade associations--read 
lobbyists--registered in Washington to give tender loving care to the 
President's health care bill. There is no doubt in my mind that I have 
the courage to say ``no'' to any one of them, to any scores of them, 
any hundreds of them, if they are trying to push on us something which 
is unrealistic, unaffordable, and which does not make a health care 
plan work properly for our people.
  Enough of this weighing health care reform as a political 
calculation. Enough of this knowing in your heart that we need health 
care reform, that the American people want it. They deserve it. We all 
have family members and friends who have aching conditions of health 
care insufficiency which, in our hearts, we know we want to reform, but 
then somehow conclude that we do not have the will to stand up to the 
special interests to create the reform to bring that about. Again, 
alone among all modern countries in the world, America, Mr. President, 
with 70,000 people who have health insurance, losing it every single 
day.
  In conclusion, Mr. President, enough of even thinking about 
squandering this chance to pass health care because special interests 
and partisanship magnify the critical nature of one's vote. Oh, yes, 
this is a vote which will be critically analyzed, and it ought to be. 
It is a broad vote to critically analyze because it is one of the most 
important votes any of us will ever make in our public lives. Health 
care reform is exactly the place to surprise all cynics, to surprise 
the obstructionists and simply do our job.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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