[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 107 (Friday, August 5, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 5, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. DURENBERGER. Mr. President, I listened with interest to my 
colleague, the majority leader, this morning talk about health care 
reform and the schedule we are on, and I am glad we are getting to that 
point. I appreciate also the comments about the fact it is time to rise 
up and do what is good for America. So I would like to take just a 
couple minutes this morning and remind everyone in this Chamber of a 
visual that I hope they cannot and do not forget, and that is the 
President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, on January 
25, 1994, speaking on the subject and the challenge of health care 
reform, holding up his veto pen and saying: If the legislation you send 
me does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can 
never be taken away, I will take this pen, veto that legislation, and 
we will come right back here and start over again.
  I hope that during the course of the debate, I and others will have 
an opportunity to continue to repeat that promise: If the legislation 
you send me does not guarantee every American private health insurance 
that can never be taken away, I will take this pen and veto that 
legislation.
  Mr. President, we can get ready right now to veto the Gephardt bill, 
the Clinton bill, and the Mitchell bill. Not a one of these bills meets 
the test of the President of the United States. Neither does anything 
that the President has said since January 25, with the exception of one 
very lucid response to a Governor in Boston when he spoke on the 
subject of universal coverage. All of the rhetoric since January has 
been on the word ``guarantee'' and none of the rhetoric has been zeroed 
in on ``private health insurance.''
  In all the talk about promises about universal coverage, about 
mandates, about triggers, hard and soft and in between, I have never 
forgotten the President's insistence on private health insurance for 
every American.
  Mr. President, the bills presented by President Clinton, by Mr. 
Mitchell and Mr. Gephardt do not guarantee private health plans to all 
Americans. The only way to make good on that guarantee is to give 
everyone an opportunity to buy a private health plan. The only way to 
make good on that guarantee is to make that plan affordable to every 
person to whom the guarantee is made. Otherwise, it is an empty 
promise. The only way to get affordable prices on health plans is to 
reduce the cost of medical and insurance services, maintain and improve 
quality of care, and expand access to those services. And the only way 
to improve quality and lower prices is through market competition.
  So as I began looking through the 1400 or so pages of the latest 
Democratic proposal, Senator Mitchell's bill, I went on a hunt for a 
marketplace. I have been through this drill before, back in a snowstorm 
in December, with the Clinton bill. I searched in vain for real market 
forces in the Labor Committee product--the same result. It is not 
there. And here we go again.
  Mr. President, all is not lost. There is at the desk today the one 
bipartisan bill that has been passed through a committee of the 
Congress of the United States. Its number, if you care, is S. 2351. It 
was passed out of the Senate Finance Committee on July 2, 1994.
  If you want to find out how to encourage medical markets, I urge you 
to read S. 2351. I urge you to listen to the comments of those of us 
who have worked so hard over this period of time to get to this point. 
Remember, the President promised the American people private health 
plans. The Finance Committee bill extends that promise to the elderly. 
For nearly 30 years, America's elderly have been forced at age 65 to 
join the Federal Government's single-payer system we call Medicare. The 
Finance Committee bill gives American elderly a way out of a wasteful 
Canadian system back into America, a private health plan that cannot be 
taken away. The Mitchell bill drops out all of those provisions. 
Instead, it slashes payments to the doctors and the hospitals who serve 
Medicare patients and uses all of the proceeds for a new drug benefit.
  Mr. President, I express my appreciation to the managers of this bill 
for yielding time from morning business.

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