[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, as we are being reminded every minute 
of every day now, we are at a critical juncture of health care reform. 
As the clock ticks, the Congress still has to make the key decisions 
that will shape the final bill. Will Congress enact reform that 
guarantees universal coverage and that guarantees strong cost 
containment, or will we not? That is still a question, Mr. President.
  I am here to tell how one particular family, a West Virginia family, 
hopes and prays that we in the U.S. Senate answer that question 
positively. Last week, I visited a young family in Martinsburg, in what 
we call the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. I was reminded in the 
clearest terms possible just why we must stay focused here in the 
Senate, why we must succeed here in the Senate, and why we must keep 
our promise of real health care reform.
  Leslie and Michael Saunders, Mr. President, are an all-too-typical 
American family. They are working hard; they are playing by the rules; 
they are raising their young children. Yet, they are still getting 
crushed by their health care needs. Michael is an associate church 
pastor and suffers from Crohn's disease. Leslie had both her gall 
bladder and her appendix removed in the last year--something that can 
happen to any one of us at any time. On top of all that, they are still 
dealing with the cost of the births of their two children, Bethany and 
Seth, neither of whom have particularly good health. These medical 
needs are not extraordinary when you have something called health 
insurance. But these medical needs turn into absolute nightmares when 
health insurance is not there, when it disappears at the wrong time, 
for whatever reason.
  About 6 years ago, when Leslie, the mother, was pregnant with 
Bethany, the church that employed Michael felt that it had to switch 
health plans. The Saunders were assured that even with their 
preexisting condition--his Crohn's disease, that is, and as outrageous 
as it sounds, her pregnancy, which is considered a preexisting 
condition--and most times in this country, if you do not have health 
insurance and you become pregnant, you cannot buy health insurance 
because your pregnancy is considered a preexisting condition, and that 
was the case with Leslie. So they had been assured that, even with the 
Crohn's disease and her pregnancy, they would be covered by health 
insurance. That sounded like everything would be OK. But that insurance 
company then went bankrupt.
  Just a few months later, the Saunders found themselves where millions 
of other Americans fall every day: Working, working hard, playing by 
the rules, but with no health care insurance.
  For Michael and Leslie, the result was especially costly because she 
had just had a baby. Because they lost their health insurance, Mr. 
President, just when they needed it, the Saunders family is swimming in 
debt; they owe many thousands. I know this because I went and visited 
and talked with them in their home, as I do every day I am in West 
Virginia; I go and visit some family that has a health insurance 
crisis, or feels that it is going to have a health insurance crisis, so 
that I can see health care through the eyes of the people that I serve 
and that I represent see that they cannot afford to buy health 
insurance, Mr. President. Each month they try to do the best they can. 
Out of his earnings they pay $25 to the hospital each month--that is 
all they can do, but they do it regularly--$25 to make good on their 
huge medical debts.
  They put off other medical needs, like their children's allergies 
because they cannot afford the $400 for treatment. And they pray for 
the good health of each family member.
  Mr. President, we talk around here often about families not having 
enough of this or that so they have to trade between health insurance 
and food. This family does. This family has to give their two small 
children less food and poor quality food because they cannot afford to 
do otherwise. And because they do not have health insurance, and they 
are paying this amount of money a month, they are on the edge all the 
time.
  In the next weeks, as Congress ponders the key issues in health care 
reform, everybody should stop and think about families like the 
Saunders family. I will be thinking about them all the time. They 
define what real health care reform is about, guaranteed coverage for 
all Americans, for working families like the Saunders, families who 
were doing everything right; playing by the rules, paying their taxes, 
and trying to pay off their medical bills. Affordable coverage, so the 
employees like the tiny Tri-State Church in Charles Town, WV, can do 
their share in covering the people who work for them like Michael 
Saunders does.
  The idea that pregnancy can be considered as a preexisting condition 
would be a joke, Mr. President, if it were not so true and so wrong. 
The idea that a hardworking family, a church pastor cannot find health 
insurance in a country called America is an outrage; and the idea that 
young parents have to cut corners on health care, have to cut corners 
on food for their children is nothing short of tragic.
  Mike Saunders put the debate over health care reform into pretty 
clear terms as far as this Senator is concerned when he sat in his 
living room and he said: ``In Washington health care is about politics, 
but remember we are out here with our real lives.''
  That is what he said. That is something that we cannot and dare not 
lose sight of. We have to enact a health care plan in response to the 
real worries and the real needs that are part of real life that the 
Saunders are living with every day; that is about making sure that 
every American has guaranteed private insurance that can never be lost 
or can never be taken away; that those Saunders kids will be able to 
eat what they ought to be eating and they will never have to worry 
about health insurance; that nobody--nobody--can intervene in their 
life and take their health insurance away.
  There are some who say that universal coverage, health insurance for 
all Americans is not necessary; that if we set our sights lower, to 
goals like aiming to cover 90 percent of Americans, that that is still 
real reform, that is still acceptable and we should finish the year 
with that declaring success.
  Mr. President, Leslie and Michael Saunders respectfully disagree. If 
we give up on universal coverage, here is what happens: Wealthy 
Americans will keep their health care. All of us, of course, in 
Congress will keep our health care and still have little to worry about 
when they need a doctor. That will be for the wealthy and those of us 
who serve in Congress. We will do well. Poor Americans will get free 
health insurance because they belong to something called Medicaid and 
they will get a decent benefits package and it will be entirely free.
  For the rich, fine; us, fine; the poor, fine. But working class 
Americans will still have to fear being left out in the cold. Any day, 
any week, they will have that fear, and so will young families, and so 
will people when they switch jobs.
  I suggest that millions of families just like Michael and Leslie 
Saunders will be unable to get or to afford health insurance. They will 
have to continue cutting corners, postpone seeing a doctor, and walk 
into a hospital emergency room when they are seriously ill to get 
treatment, too late for treatment, where the cost of their care will be 
shifted right onto the bills of insured patients.

  So, Mr. President, as we continue to debate and discuss health care 
reform--as we caucus and meet in our committees and start putting 
together bills--I ask my colleagues, I beg of my colleagues, to think 
about the families in their own States who are just like Michael and 
Leslie Saunders of West Virginia.
  I suggest we do our final work on health care reform with young, 
hardworking, hopeful families as our moral compass. Because, if we fail 
to pass real reform with universal coverage, we will doom those 
families and many, many more young families, to sleepless nights 
worrying that a daughter's cough might require a visit to the doctor, 
which they cannot afford and do not have insurance for; and to 
afternoons watching, for example, a son's Little League game in fear 
that a bad hop on a ground ball might mean a couple of stitches, and 
you have to pay for stitches; and to anguish over what should be a 
joyous pregnancy. For Heaven's sake, pregnancy, a preexisting 
condition.
  You are a young woman in the United States and you do not have health 
insurance because you think you are going to live forever. You get 
married. You get pregnant. You do not have health insurance. You apply 
for health insurance. You cannot get it because you were pregnant, 
because that is something called a preexisting condition.
  That is what we are offering people in the United States of America 
today, Mr. President.
  No other industrial country, no other civilized country--I used to 
say that only the United States and the Union of South Africa treated 
people the way we do in health care. Now I am not so sure, because I 
think Nelson Mandela is promising universal health insurance to his 
people. So it may be us alone if we do not do our work correctly as 
Republicans and Democrats here in the U.S. Congress and particularly 
here in the U.S. Senate.
  Remember what Michael Saunders told me. Health care reform is not 
about politics, it is about people.
  Visit with the Saunders families of the various States that my 
colleagues come from, and universal coverage is no political buzzword. 
Universal coverage is not just a phrase that can be defined the way it 
is easiest for Congress to achieve. It is the heart of health reform. 
It is the way to promise security to all Americans so they can work, 
raise their children, have a baby, and contribute to their community 
and to the strength of the country that they love and work for.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. What is the 
pending business?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield? I was just handed something.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Senator from New Mexico.

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