[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]

 
         HEALTH CARE IN ROCHESTER, NY--A MODEL FOR THE COUNTRY

  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about health care. I am 
just lucky, because I represent Rochester, NY, where we have had the 
Clinton plan, for the most part, for about 40 years. So these tactics 
and misrepresentations don't affect us.
  We started community rating about 40 years ago. We have about half 
the uninsured rate over the rest of the country. The premiums in 
Rochester, NY, are one-third less than the national average and we have 
administrative costs which are much smaller, about 4 percent less than 
other systems.
  This health care plan will not hurt anybody. As a matter of fact, we 
have superb care. In Rochester we have nine hospitals that cooperate. 
We have hospitals that have 85 percent bed utilization. That lowers 
cost and we are constantly planning to meet future needs.
  We have heard all this scare business before. Let me read something 
for the benefit of the Members. This is a comment that was made when 
the Medicare system was being debated in 1968.

       ``One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or 
     socialism has been by way of medicine.'' He urged his 
     listeners to write to Congress opposing Medicare and warned, 
     ``If you don't do this, one of these days you and I are going 
     to spend our sunset years telling our children and our 
     children's children what it was like in America when men were 
     free.''

  That was Ronald Reagan, with the spot paid for by the American 
Medical Association and the American Medical PAC, and played at 
Operation Coffee Cup, coffees put on by doctors' wives.
  America, we have heard this all before.
  Are we really the only industrialized nation on the planet that can't 
provide good, affordable care to all our people?

                          ____________________