[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    HEALTH CARE PROGRAM NEEDS CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas] is 
recognized during morning business for 3 minutes.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Madam Speaker, I wish to talk a little bit 
about health care. I think it is clear that the majority of the 
American people feel the health care program needs fundamental change; 
however, not the kind of an overhaul that would give us a Government-
run bureaucratic system entirely different from the private delivery 
system that we now have, but, rather, to reform with practical 
solutions that will not add to the deficit.
  They do not want the Government in charge. They already see what 
happens when the Federal Government calls the shots: Taxes go up, 
quality goes down, and choices are taken away.
  There has been some talk about gradually enacting the unpopular 
components of the President's bill like employer mandates, mandatory 
health alliances, and price caps. But if these ideas are unpopular 
today and unworkable today, they will be no less unpopular, no less 
unworkable in the future.
  In fact, that is one of the problems with this system that we have is 
if something does not seem to work, if something does not seem to be 
popular, we start it at a very low level and let it gradually ease in 
to end up with the thing nobody wanted in the beginning, because it was 
made relatively palatable at the start, then we move it on into 
something totally unpalatable without much chance to change. I hope 
that does not happen in this instance.
  We ought to talk just a minute, it seems to me, about some of the 
really conceptual ideas that are here, in terms of what philosophy 
works in our country, in terms of the private-sector delivery system 
that worked so well for the things that we do in this country, 
financial responsibility, individual responsibility, and there is some 
of that involved here, problem solving.
  We need to deal with solving the problems that are there. We do not 
need some sort of political theater with all kinds of perception 
twists, all kinds of sales programs with no real need or evidence that 
it will work.
  For instance, employer mandates: employer mandates really cause an 
opportunity for a shift from problems in health care to problems in 
unemployment. In my State of Wyoming, the majority of jobs are small 
businesses, the kinds of small businesses that will not be able to 
exist under employer mandates. We will have traded off the health care 
problem for a job problem.
  Alliances: The Medical Science Journal says it takes 800,000 people 
to put together an alliance that works. We do not have that kind of 
community in Wyoming. We have a State with 450,000 total population. We 
need the flexibility to have a different kind of private delivery 
system.
  The idea of a bureaucracy, a total bureaucracy, running the health 
care program is simply not consistent.
  I went to Canada last year to take a look at their program. Indeed, 
there are some good things about it. But they operate in a background 
and a culture and history quite different than ours, and the idea of 
single payer, the idea of lack of choice, the idea of putting everybody 
together in a very large mandatory alliance simply is not consistent 
with the things that we are accustomed to here.
  Americans do not want to trade the problem of uninsurance for 
problems of unemployment. They want reforms.
  There are things that we can do. There are plans before us that work 
that will solve the problem, and that is the direction that we should 
take.

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