[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 79 (Tuesday, June 21, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE GOES PRIME TIME

  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I urge Americans to tune in tonight when the 
health care debate literally goes prime time. I congratulate the NBC 
television network for recognizing the importance of this issue, the 
most sweeping legislation this Congress will consider in 60 years, and 
for focusing on this issue and for devoting 2 hours tonight of prime 
time attention to it.
  Indeed, many of the local affiliates are then adding another hour for 
discussion within our local areas. I hope it is the start of many such 
discussions that need to take place across this country, because there 
is a lot of bad information or disinformation or misinformation or 
misunderstandings about health care and all the issues involved with 
it.

  My hope is that the televised town meeting tonight will begin to 
focus these issues in the minds of many, many citizens and that by 
watching the televised town meetings like the one that NBC conducts 
tonight, by attending town meetings that many Members of Congress will 
be sponsoring over the Fourth of July week, by attending many other 
meetings and by asking questions, all of us will get a better 
understanding of this important issue and that Members of Congress will 
get a better understanding of what their constituents want done.
  The town meeting tonight, for instance, hopefully will delve beyond 
the 15-second sound bites and get past the rhetoric so that citizens in 
our country and Members of Congress will understand the need finally to 
enact and plan affordable access to health care for all. I have heard 
that call from my constituents at every town meeting and from the 
60,000 West Virginians who signed petitions that I personally delivered 
to you, Mr. Speaker, last year, requesting comprehensive health care 
legislation be passed.
  Yes, Mr. Speaker, just as the health care reform debate goes prime 
time tonight, so the Congress must know that the prime time for action 
is now, not next year, and not the next century.
  Let me speak as frankly as I can, Mr. Speaker, and say to you and 
through you to the American public that we better get involved if we 
want health care, because the 5 percent that are spreading all the bad 
information or disinformation or noninformation, or simply do not 
understand, are clouding it for everyone else. I think the message is 
very clear, that people in this country want comprehensive health care, 
guaranteed private insurance that cannot be taken away.
  What happens if it does not pass this year? So what? Who loses, one 
might ask. Let me tell you who loses. Who loses, for instance, is the 
small business owner who is trying desperately to do what he or she 
knows is important for his or her employees and provide that insurance 
in today's market, knowing that they cannot get a competitive rate, 
knowing that there is discriminatory pricing against them. The small 
business operator loses because under most of the plans that are out 
there, including the President's plan, the small business operator gets 
a significant subsidy and, in fact, would be able to provide insurance 
at a far lower cost than he or she is presently able to do so.

  Who loses if health care does not pass this year? The large business 
operator loses, the GM's, the Fords, the LTV's, the large companies in 
this country who pay 14 percent or 15 percent of their wages in health 
care and would see that lowered to 7.9 percent. Ask them who is more 
competitive against the Japanese and the Germans and all the others 
where their health care costs are significantly lower. That is who 
loses in this country.
  Who loses if health care does not pass? I lose and people like me who 
have good insurance through their employer. Yes, we have good insurance 
as part of the Federal Employee System, 9 million Federal employees and 
their dependents are part of it. But each year if we have got insurance 
and each year we know our benefits are going down, our deductibles are 
going up, our copays are going up and our premiums are going up.
  What we have in this country right now is a prescription that says 
less people are going to pay more money for less coverage. That is who 
loses.
  The people who want to change jobs will lose if there is not 
comprehensive health care. Try carrying your insurance policy to the 
next job. It does not work, does it?
  Yes, I hear that all we need is insurance reform, tinker a little bit 
here, do community rating, do portability so we can carry it to the 
next job, adjust the system so that the insurance companies cannot 
exclude because of preexisting illness. All of those ought to be done.
  Read the Wall Street Journal, not your bastion of social liberalism. 
Read some of the other publications in the last 2 weeks who point out 
that if we do not have universal coverage, that is, everybody is in the 
pool, if we do not have universal coverage, we cannot do community 
rating that means anything, we cannot do portability, we cannot do the 
other insurance reforms. Because without universal coverage, we will 
just have the sickest of the sick in the pool. How are we going to do 
any kind of ratings on that?
  A lot of people lose if health care does not pass, Mr. Speaker. It is 
time for all of us to act.

                          ____________________