[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1050
 
                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klein). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Boehner] is recognized during morning business for 4 minutes.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, last week I was at home in Ohio, as were 
many of my colleagues, talking to my constituents about what was on 
their minds. Health care came up quite a bit as I toured around my 
district. There was great concern expressed by many people about what 
was going to happen in this Congress with regard to health care reform. 
Were we going to get the Bill Clinton type health care reform that was 
going to put the Government in a larger role with regard to health care 
that I and the constituents of my district would receive?
  One issue that came up repeatedly was the issue of rationing. We will 
not hear the proponents of these big government health bills talk about 
rationing. We will hear words such as cost control, trying to make 
health care more affordable. But the fact is, the American people are 
beginning to sense rather acutely that all of this means rationing.
  What is rationing? Rationing means denying service for certain 
procedures to certain parts of our society that the Government would 
decide is not in the best interest of the country as a whole, in order 
to hold down costs.
  Last month in the Committee on Education and Labor I offered an 
amendment during the markup of the President's health care bill that 
would allow the American people to buy supplemental insurance policies 
in case they have been denied care, in case they have been denied 
services under one of these big government bills. During the debate on 
my amendment some interesting points were made by my colleagues on the 
Democrat side of the aisle, most notably by the gentleman from Montana 
[Mr. Williams], who is the chairman of the Labor Management 
Subcommittee that had jurisdiction over this health care bill.
  Let me read what he had to say when we got into the discussion on my 
amendment.

       But at the end of the day, the only way the American people 
     are really going to get health costs reduced is through some 
     type of a competitive arrangement that moves toward 
     restricting unnecessary procedures.
       Now, who is going to decide what is necessary, who is going 
     to decide what is unnecessary, we could all go through that 
     forever. Sometimes this goes by the name of rationing. The 
     gentleman's amendment would allow an off ramp, at least for 
     those who could afford it, to continue to pay more. It seems 
     to me that it may be that off ramp is necessary.
       I am not as opposed to the gentleman's amendment, as some 
     of my colleagues on this side. But what we have to decide as 
     we vote here is do we want to restrain health care costs or 
     don't we? Because the gentleman's amendment, if in the final 
     bill signed by the President, is going to say health care 
     costs are not going to be restrained to that great a degree 
     because competition is not going to be managed, no kind of 
     rationing will be used for those people who can afford 
     supplemental insurance, they will get an off ramp and be able 
     to continue to speed on with health care costs rising.

  It is clear to me from the strongest proponents of this bill that the 
most onerous part of this legislation that came out of our committee is 
this attempt to control costs by limiting access to the system for 
those who may be in need of care.
  Today there are some who cannot afford health care insurance. That is 
certainly a form of rationing and we would all like to fix that. But I 
do not want to be the one sitting in a hospital room, having some 
government bureaucrat decide what kind of care that I am going to get.
  Who is going to make the decision about the 75-year-old person who 
needs a hip replacement, the doctor and that patient and their family, 
or a government bureaucrat? Who is going to make the decision about a 
70-year-old person who wants to have heart surgery, who needs heart 
surgery, is it going to be the patient, their doctor and their family, 
or is it going to be some government bureaucrat sitting here in 
Washington? What about the newborns that have problems at birth, who is 
going to make those decisions?
  As we move toward this debate, I have much more confidence in the 
American people and their physicians than I do in some bureaucrat 
making these decisions about our health care.

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