[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         AS THE DEMOCRATS MEET

  (Mr. HOKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, recently the ranking members of the Committee 
on Education and Labor, the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on 
Energy and Commerce, and the Committee on Ways and Means in the House, 
sent a letter to the chairmen of those committees asking for some 
bipartisan support, and to get together and have a meeting on how they 
could all go with a Republican-Democrat approach to health care reform.
  The chairman of the Subcommittee on Health in the Committee on Ways 
and Means scribbled across the top of the letter that he had received, 
and sent it back to the ranking committee member on the Committee on 
Ways and Means, that ``This is pure, unadulterated * * *'' and I cannot 
finish the sentence here in the House. Apparently the congressional 
Democrats and President Clinton are going to meet again next week to 
plot ways to pass health care reform without Republican help, because I 
guess they do not want it.
  Since the Democrats seem to be so out of touch with what middle-class 
America wants from health care reform, let me give the some hints. 
First of all, the American people want reform that preserves the high 
quality of our current system. They want malpractice reform to keep 
health care dollars from going to lawyers. They want portability 
reform, a change in preexisting condition requirements, and other 
insurance reforms that will promote universal access to private health 
insurance.
  The American people do not want to pay a huge payroll tax. They do 
not want 98,000 more Federal bureaucrats to run it.
  Mr. Speaker, the people want reform now that fixes the problems of 
our current system without creating a whole new set of problems to be 
fixed later.

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