[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 80 (Wednesday, June 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1920
 
                THE PUBLIC MUST SPEAK UP ON HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Abercrombie). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, the purpose of my taking the floor tonight is 
twofold. It is, first, to urge the public to speak up on health care, 
and to remind the Congress what it got sent here to do, and the 
importance of affordable health care for everyone, and the second is to 
urge the public to pay attention, particularly in the last few weeks, 
to some of the claims that have been made in attacking health care and 
to look at them for what they are.
  In terms of my first mission, Mr. Speaker, urging the public to stand 
up, first of all, I believe that the vast majority of the American 
public does support five basic goals, and those goals very quickly, Mr. 
Speaker, are that there should be guaranteed private health insurance 
for all that cannot be taken away, that there should be control of 
rapidly rising health care costs that make health care and health care 
insurance unaffordable to many of our citizens, that there should be 
freedom of choice to choose your provider, that there needs to be 
reforms in the existing insurance systems, and, finally, that there 
needs to be a provision for employer responsibility, shared 
responsibility, particularly assistance to those businesses, 
essentially small businesses, that need assistance to provide insurance 
to their employees.
  Now, having said that, I have been treated to a barrage of attacks 
during the past few weeks by what I call the mandate maulers. These are 
the folks that want to come and scare you to death with the mandates 
that they envision.
  Now, let me tell you what their predictions are. Their predictions 
are that the health care plan, particularly the one advanced by 
President Clinton, is a job-killer, that it will cause massive 
hemorrhage of jobs from our economy.
  Let us look at the record of these nay-sayers. The record is not 
impressive. In 1935, Social Security; we have been going back through 
the records. And looking at the statements by the grandfathers of the 
present generation of nay-sayers, Social Security was going to prolong 
the recession. It was going to be a job-killer.
  Today, of course, you do not find too many of those making those 
assertions about health care today willing to move to repeal Social 
Security.
  The second issue then is Medicare, a little more currently, but still 
a little while ago, 1965. And once again they say, now, the parents of 
the present generation, coming forward and the nay-sayers coming 
forward and saying socialism, controlled medicine, job-killers, death 
to the economy and, of course, we know the record now that every senior 
citizen over 65 is covered by Medicare. You do not find too many on 
either side of the aisle that suggest doing away with it.
  Now we come more currently, the budget of 1993, that budget debate: 
job-killer, we were warned. Somebody was trotting out a projection by 
each State from some fly-by-night tax foundation, oh, the Tax 
Foundation. That is it. I do not see the Tax Foundation predicting the 
job loss if this package passed, I do not see that study being flaunted 
much anymore, because it has been proven not to have been a job-killer, 
this budget package, but a job-creator, four times the rate of job 
creation over the Bush administration just a couple of years before.
  Finally, we get to the present or close to the present, the minimum 
wage, the minimum wage debate of 1988, which was quite interesting: 
massive job loss was going to be caused by increasing the minimum wage 
90 cents over 2 years. That was the prediction. Of course, now we know 
that was not the case either. Many studies bear that out. Not job-
killers, but they want you to forget this, Mr. Speaker, and they want 
the American public to forget their nay-saying predictions and how 
wrong they were.
  We now get to health care and the fact that at some point 51 million 
people in our country, most of them working, are going to be without 
health insurance, perhaps for a day, perhaps for years.
  We also then need to look at the fact that 80-some-million Americans 
have health insurance, yes. But do they know that they have lifetime 
caps in there, for instance? Do they know that they have preexisting 
illness provisions that can deny them coverage? So millions more get 
drawn into this.
  Who loses if health care does not pass? It is going to be a midlevel 
executive that I spoke to who has two children with preexisting 
illnesses. He cannot transfer jobs. He is scared to death that his 
company is going to change carriers.
  Who loses if health care does not pass? It is going to be the small 
business operator trying to provide health care today to his or her 
employees but knowing their costs go up 30 to 40 percent a year, much 
greater than larger companies. They do not know, for instance, because 
the nay-sayers are not telling them that their costs could be as low 
has 3\1/2\ percent of gross payroll if the Clinton health care package 
passed or one of the other plans.
  How many small businesses know, for instance, that under many of the 
plans put forward their costs, increased costs, could be as little as 
19 cents to 33 cents an hour, much less than a minimum wage increase 
would be? But they are not being told that by the nay-sayer either.
  Many say you can get by with simple insurance reforms, and yet the 
irony to this is that if you do not have universal coverage, everybody 
in there, you cannot do very much with community rating, because then 
you are only trying to take care of the very sickest of the sick, and 
so the need is to have everybody in that pool.
  Mr. Speaker, finally, there is the importance of the American people 
to speak up and say enough nay-saying, get about the job, get it done.

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