[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 109 (Tuesday, August 9, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION DEFERRING HEALTH CARE REFORM DEBATE UNTIL 
                                  1995

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, we have said it before, and we say it again: 
Gridlock has come to the aid of the American public.
  Whereas just that few short months ago gridlock seemed to be a bad, 
distasteful word, it really has come around to be the saving feature of 
the health care debate.
  What do we mean by that? The latest polls indicate a great 
dissatisfaction on the part of the American public with the various 
plans that have been floated around for more than a year and a half 
now. So what do we do? We know that at the present moment in the House 
there are not enough votes to pass any one of the big proposals that we 
have been searching for as possible answers to the health care reform 
issue.
  So I have proposed, and I filed before the Committee on Rules, an 
amendment, a substitute amendment. The House of Representatives finds 
itself with more than 100 different bills having been introduced on 
health care. Because we cannot agree on anything, and because the 
American people feel that we should not be rushing into this massive 
reform in the last hours of this session, we prefer, and the American 
people prefer, to postpone the great debate until next year, to think 
about it, to stand back and see what has been accomplished, if 
anything, in the formal debates and the informal debates that we have 
held on the issue.
  I myself now have introduced a bill and filed it in the Committee on 
Rules which I hope they will make in order, a substitute bill, which 
will defer all debate on the health care reform until 1995, and in the 
meantime, a blue ribbon commission, much like the one that was formed a 
few years back to solve the Social Security problems that beset us, and 
have that bipartisan commission report back by March 1.
  What will this commission do in the meantime? They will look over all 
the plans that have already been instituted, new kinds of reform by the 
various States in the Union. They will look at what hospitals and 
providers and insurance companies have already been able to accomplish 
in funding kinds of reform, and then with the panoply of reform 
measures that have abounded across the land, the bipartisan commission 
will be able to make recommendations back to the Congress in order to 
have us look carefully and slowly at what reform measures we want to 
adopt.
  According to the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, only 31 percent 
of Americans support passing health care now, while 61 percent prefer 
waiting until 1995. They do not want us to rush into this. Gridlock has 
saved the day, we hope.
  When Grace Marie Arnett, who is the president of Arnett & Co., which 
analyzes health policy, was asked about our proposal, the Gekas 
Commission, she said, ``That should have been done from the 
beginning.'' Ms. Arnett urged the commission to tell the truth to the 
American people, that they cannot get something for nothing; let us get 
a good diagnosis, not just a set of different government solutions. Put 
the consumer at the center and see what a real health care market can 
accomplish. Thus far, the people have not been told anything. So says 
Ms. Arnett, who endorses the concept of the Gekas Commission to wait 
and see and inspect all of the various proposals across the land before 
we rush in the last hours of this session to adopt some sort of 
political health care reform, not a consumer, taxpayer-based, people-
back-at-home type of health care reform.
  The other thing that must be said, if we do not stand back and look, 
we are going to be hosed here in this Chamber. Why? Because we have 
exceptions built into the proposals, an industrial group in New York, a 
hospital in Houston, a building project in Chicago, all being secreted 
into the massive new bills that are being introduced. These special 
pork projects have no place anytime, let alone in a health care reform 
issue.

                          ____________________