[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 76 (Thursday, June 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Hefner). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns] 
is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
[Mrs. Johnson].
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the 
gentleman ended on all the things that we can do and that we can do 
constructively, because there is not one of us standing here that do 
not agree with that list of things that you laid out.
  However, Mr. Speaker, this special order would not be complete from 
my personal point of view if I did not lay out for you the particularly 
hostile impact a mandate would have on women in America. It is worth 
it, if the Members will indulge me just a couple of minutes, to look at 
the extraordinary and disparate impact that a mandate would have on 
women in America.
  From 1979 to 1990, women started twice as many businesses as men did. 
In other words, women became owners and operators of twice as many 
businesses as men did.
  Why? Because women are better educated than they have ever been in 
America, they have better access to credit than they have ever had in 
America, they have more courage than they have ever had in America, and 
they are getting out there with their dreams.
  However, to make a small business successful, you have to be able to 
plow back your profits. You have to be able to hire. You have to be 
able to grow. This mandate, because it is so costly, hits hardest at 
all those young businesses, 2 to 1, founded by women.
  The second point, this business about subsidies sounds wonderful on 
paper. We are going to help that small business, we are going to 
subsidize his premiums.
  Look what happens if you subsidize the premiums of low-wage workers 
50 percent. You just tell that corporation, ``Why, you spin off your 
low-wage jobs, put all your $12,000 employees into one small business 
under 25, and we will pay half your health care premiums,'' so the 
company does that. Who are those $12,000 workers? Nine out of 10 are 
women.
  Now where do they work? In a company with no career ladder, no role 
models, and no opportunity. For women, this mandate will mean 
isolation, it will mean dead-end jobs, it will mean stagnation. For 
women, that bifurcated premium structure is terminal to their dreams.
  Then there is another problem for women in this bill, and that is 
that if you mandate costs on the employer, Government ends up having to 
step in with price controls.

                              {time}  2140

  Bureaucracy. You step into our health care system with Government 
price controls and you will not get the research and the cures of the 
future that we have gotten in the past. But oddly enough, health 
research dollars in America went for decades to the diseases that were 
most prevalent among men. It was not malicious, it just happened that 
way. Most of the researchers were male. Most of the people looking at 
research were male. Nobody really thought about the fact that breast 
cancer killed as many women every year as the lost Americans in the 
Vietnam war over the whole course of that war. We just did not think 
about it. But in the 1980's, we here in the Congress, men and women 
together, thought about that and we are doing very good research now on 
women's diseases. But the costs are extraordinary.
  A company in Connecticut has spent $40 million developing just the 
material to do the trial run on what looks like a very promising breast 
cancer treatment. If it is proved bo be good, it will cost them $200 
million to build the plant to produce the stuff.
  Who is going to invest $200 million if we have a system in which the 
Government is going to come in and say, the price is too high, you 
cannot sell it at that, it will be off the market. It will be off the 
market and the research will not be done.

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