[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 110 (Wednesday, August 10, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      DO NOT SOCIALIZE HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Clyburn). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Hunter] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the minority leader.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleagues 
who talked about what they saw as the benefits of universal coverage 
and, I think, a very eloquent closing by the gentlewoman from Georgia 
[Ms. McKinney], who spoke of the necessity of this House doing the 
people's business, and the people not being special interests, not 
being necessarily corporations or industries, but people. And I think 
what America has heard, Mr. Speaker I want to speak very strongly 
against the first President Clinton plan that came out that now 
apparently is dead, not because of Republican opposition, but because 
we are outnumbered by 100 votes in this House and by quite a few in the 
other body, but because American people, business people, employees who 
wanted to keep their jobs, talked to their Democrat Representatives and 
their Democrat Senators, not to Republicans, who were in the minority 
and cannot control things, and told them not to pass this plan.

                              {time}  2250

  So you have the unique situation where a Democrat President, 
President Clinton, having total power, total control with his party 
over both bodies of the U.S. Congress, with the power to write a bill, 
delivery it to his desk within a few days, and sign it, with the 
Republican party being basically powerless to stop it, with all those 
things going for him, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, 
was not able to push his first health care plan through.
  Now, why did the people stop that plan? Why did Democrat Members of 
Congress and Members of the Senate stop that plan?
  Well, I think it is fairly clear, Mr. Speaker. They sopped the plan 
because they perceived that it would be bad for them. And it was not 
just a few industries, because I don't think the Democrat Party in the 
House is controlled by a few industries. I think that the Members of 
the House who are Democrats have the same representative reflection of 
their constituencies that those on the Republican side have. They do 
what their constituents ask them to do, and they try to reflect the 
feelings of their constituents.
  Now, why would not Americans, when faced with what has been described 
as this nirvana of health care, this great new benefit, where nobody is 
ever left out, everybody has a guarantee for life, from cradle to 
grave, you are going to be taken care of, and that very appealing 
personality of this President, who can look at an audience, whether it 
is a talk show or people in the White House, and you see a little 
glisten of a tear in his eye, and he talks about giving them security, 
why would not Americans walk right up and sign up for that program?
  It is because Americans are a little bit different from folks in the 
other parts of the world. We are a country full of people that 
appreciate when Government gives you some security, it takes away some 
of your freedom. This debate over health care is a debate between 
Government control and freedom. And I hate to hear the word ``reform'' 
used when Members first started to describe the President's own health 
care plan, because for practical purposes, President Clinton's first 
plan was socialism. If it did not socialize the delivery of health care 
itself, it at least socialized the financing mechanism.
  I have never considered socialism to be a reform of any kind. 
Certainly Cuba has all-inclusive health care coverage. They have got 
universal coverage. Communist China has universal coverage. All of the 
nations we have taught over the last 40 years concerning the faults of 
socialism have universal health coverage. The problem is they don't 
have any quality, and they don't have any quality of life for the 
people.
  You know, John Papageorge, a former commander in the 101st Airborne, 
described quality of life in America as being a function of the amount 
of control that you have over your own life. I think that was a very 
good description of freedom and quality of life in this country.
  A lot of people looked at the President's health care package and 
decided that they did not like what I would like to call Clinton I, 
President Clinton's first health care package.
  That was a health care package in which everybody had to march down 
and sign up for the Government health care program. And if you did not 
sign up for the Government health care program, Government caught you 
and fined you a double premium if they caught you not signing up for 
the plan. So nobody had the option to say I want to pay for it myself, 
or I would rather go somewhere else, or I don't like this plan. Every 
American was obligated to go down and sign up with Government and pay 
Government money.
  Everybody had to take a plan that was dished out under a Government 
system in which large cooperatives or purchasing alliances, Senator 
Phil Gramm called them collectives, but large purchasing alliances 
would make big deals with big insurance companies, and theoretically 
get good rates for packages. And those packages could either be an 
assigned doctor, where you basically spin a rotary wheel and if the 
doctor you get happens to be the guy who just immigrated from 
Bangladesh and has credentials to practice medicine in America, he was 
your doctor whether you liked him or not. Or maybe the preferred 
provider list, where you had a menu of doctors, but you might still not 
have the right to have the doctor you wanted. Or, in some cases under 
President Clinton's first plan, if an insurance company, and only if an 
insurance company, came forward and had a plan for what is known as fee 
for service, that is where you can pick any doctor you want, you could 
be under the government plan and still have a choice of doctors and go 
to your own doctor.
  Well, the American people did not like that deal. They weren't the 
French, they weren't the British, they weren't the German, they weren't 
the Japanese nor the Canadians. They didn't like that deal and wanted 
to maintain more freedom.
  I don't think it is unusual or unexpected that of all the nations in 
the world, the people of the United States like freedom maybe a little 
better than anybody else. And I think that is kind of a good thing.
  So they didn't sign up for President Clinton's first plan. 
Incidentally, I think another reason they didn't sign up for President 
Clinton's first plan was because they looked at some of these countries 
which had socialized medicine and although they looked pretty good at 
first, when you saw a few figures, if you looked through the figures 
and looked to the quality of medicine that was delivered, you saw some 
pretty ugly things. And let's go around the world and look at some of 
the things we saw that we could expect President Clinton to drive us 
toward with this first health care plan.
  First, we looked at Canada. Canada was offered to us in the United 
States Congress as the heaven of health care. This was the place were 
you had a single payer system where government had finally come to 
grips and ``reformed health care.''
  Well, let me tell you what health care reform did to Canada, now that 
we have looked at it a little closer.
  We now have discovered that the largest hospital in Ontario had to 
close down for 2 weeks last Christmas because they ran out of money. 
Then we discovered that there are now 177,000 Canadians waiting in line 
for operations.
  I asked the question when I was in Minnesota recently, why are all 
these Canadians coming down for operations in Minnesota, Detroit, MI, 
and other American cities? I was told it was because they don't have to 
wait in line if they come to America. They get first-class health care 
and get it now. So they come to America.
  We discovered in some places in Canada women in childbirth are not 
given epidural anesthetic. You may recall one of the articles that was 
in a national newspaper about a woman undergoing childbirth who was 
shivering in pain as her doctor passed her and said I know it hurts and 
I wish there were something I could do for you, but we just can't 
afford it.
  So we looked at Canada and we also saw of those 177,000 Canadians 
waiting for operations, over 25 percent of them surveyed say they are 
in some sort of pain. So we decided maybe Canada wasn't the great model 
for ``health care reform'' or socialized medicine.
  Well, some Members of the House talked about Japan, because Japan 
dedicates a smaller percentage of their Gross National Product to 
health care than the United States. We know what they have in Japan. 
They have a medical system in which doctors see approximately 49 
patients a day on the average. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is 
whipping people through pretty doggone fast.
  My first question was how can you possibly do that? One answer was 
mass examinations. Well, Americans, especially Americans who have been 
in uniform, don't like the idea of mass examinations. They like a 
little bit of privacy.
  You know, when I saw that figure, 49 patients a day per doctor, I 
thought about the subway system in Tokyo, where they have the 
professional packers, and these guys look like former sumo wrestlers to 
me, maybe they are not. They don't hurt anybody. But when the last 
Japanese passenger gets on that subway system who can possibly get in, 
they physically pack the people into the subway, and those big strong 
packers don't hurt anybody, but they get the last body in. That is kind 
of the image you get when you think about 49 patients a day going 
through each doctor's office in Tokyo. So we decided maybe we didn't 
want to have that kind of socialized medicine.
  We looked at Great Britain, where they have socialized medicine. And 
yet if you are a senior citizen, if you have passed a certain age, and 
you need a life saving operation, you don't get it. The reason you 
don't get it is because socialized medicine always operates 
ineffectively and they run out of money. When they run out of money, 
their philosophy to senior citizens in Great Britain is, you have lived 
a long and fruitful life and it is time for you to float from the tree, 
kind of like a leaf in the autumn time. You have had a full life and we 
will save these life saving operations for younger people.

                              {time}  2100

  That sounds fine if you look at it on paper. But when those senior 
citizens are your grandparents or your parents, you want to be able to 
have a chance to save their lives. So Americans have looked at Great 
Britain, and they do not like that socialized medicine system either.
  The President has staked quite a bit on making a health care plan go 
this year. Although it is clear that a majority of the American people 
say, wait a minute, we do not want you to rush anything through in the 
immediacy of this election season. We want you to take your time, if 
you are going to do health care, because health care is a giant 
contract with the American people. And I do not think the American 
people like the 1,300-page document that President Clinton sent down 
the first time.
  You know it took almost a year for the American people to be able to 
look at enough parts of that document and believe me, like a lot of 
Members of the House, I was pretty surprised when I would meet people 
at town hall meetings who had read that entire document, many others 
who knew the outlines, many others who knew the key provisions.
  Americans read these things, folks. Ultimately they find out what we 
vote on. So we better doggone well read the documents ourselves before 
we vote on them.
  So it took about a year for the American people to read President 
Clinton's health care plan and read it and understand it so well that 
there were enough people who objected to the plan that President 
Clinton, with a 100-seat majority in the House of Representatives being 
Democrat, could not pass that health care plan. Republicans did not 
beat that health care plan. The people of the United States beat that 
health care plan.
  We have got a couple of days until recess. We are told that there is 
another plan coming up in the House and another plan coming up in the 
Senate and that we are going to vote on these plans in the next several 
days. These plans that are comprised of thousands and thousands of 
pages of regulations, every one of which will have some impact on 
Americans' lives.
  I think that is wrong. I think the Democrat leadership in both bodies 
knows that it was the time that the American people took to look at 
this plan, the first plan that President Clinton offered, that caused 
it to lose and to be dropped, not by Republicans but by Democrats. And 
I think if we give the same light of day to this second plan, what I 
call the Gephardt-Clinton plan, named after distinguished majority 
leader in the House and the Mitchell-Clinton plan, named after the 
Democrat leader in the Senate, if the American people get a chance to 
see President Clinton's plan 2 and 3, they will be just as offended and 
just as put off and just as resistive of these two plans as they were 
of the first.
  Let me talk about just a couple of things with respect to this plan.
  First, I saw the exchange between President Clinton and the black 
entrepreneur Herb Kane, the gentleman who is the president and CEO of 
Godfather Pizzas. He did a businesslike thing, which I guess is 
sometimes unfair to do to politicians, especially when they are as 
smooth as our President is. He said, Mr. President, I am paraphrasing, 
I have looked at your plan. I am going to have to lay off people under 
this plan. I am going to have to close down franchises.
  And the President said, essentially, to him, and I am paraphrasing 
the President, I do not know why you just cannot raise the price of 
your pizzas.

  And I noticed on Mr. Kane's face, after the President said that, what 
I consider to be a pretty naive statement to a businessman who 
understands you cannot just raise the price of your goods to 
accommodate added costs, I saw kind of a look of surprise. And later on 
he told a number of us in the House, he said, if I could get more money 
for my pizzas, I would be getting it. But the point is, this plan is 
going to kill jobs. It is going to force me to close down some 
franchises that are marginal.
  And he said another thing that I thought was interesting and goes to 
the heart of this whole debate. Because this whole debate is developed 
on the Democrat idea that we are going to make employers, small 
businesses and larger businesses, pay for all the health care for their 
employees.
  Mr. Kane, once again I am paraphrasing him but I thought this was 
important, he was asked why he did not think that he owed giving health 
care or a health care program to every one of his employees. He said, 
because my first duty to my employees it to give them a job. And 
sometimes you cannot do both. That is the point with Clinton 2, with 
the second Clinton package which is being put together on the Senate 
side by Senator Mitchell and Clinton 3, the third Clinton package which 
is being put together by Mr. Gephardt and the Democrat leadership 
behind closed doors on the House side, these plans are going to kill 
jobs.
  I come from a State in which we have done what we thought were 
wonderful things for workers. The only thing we forgot to include was a 
job. We have got a workmen's compensation program in California that 
allows people to sue for stress and we have had a ton of fraudulent 
claims for stress. That has not helped workers. It has hurt the good 
workers because the fraudulent workers have gone out and collected 
their dollars, and the good workers have kept on working and the good 
businesses have moved out of California and moved to other States. And 
there is a continuing exodus.
  So with the legislature of California attempting to be so kind to the 
workers, they forgot one thing. Blue collar workers cannot hire each 
other. White collar workers cannot hire each other. You have to have a 
businessman or a businesswomen, a business owner to hire you. And you 
cannot make the environment so unfriendly to them or so unprofitable or 
so burdensome that they go out of business,because if they go out of 
business, you are out of a job.
  Well, the Clinton 2 and Clinton 3 health care plans put a lot of 
folks out of jobs.
  Let me tell you how many they put out of jobs. This is an estimate 
that is taken off the CONSAD study, ``Employment Impact of Ways and 
Means plans and Approximate Impact under the Gephardt Plan.'' The plan 
that the Democrat leadership is putting together in the House of 
Representatives is going to destroy almost a million jogs and it is 
doing to affect many times a million jobs. What do I mean by saying 
affect?
  I mean this: If you have a business that is selling a particular 
product and they are only making a $20,000-a-year profit on this small 
business and they discover that the mandated health care plan under 
President Clinton 2 or 3 or 1 is going to cost them an additional 
$30,000, then they close up. Let us say they are still making slight 
profit and they intended to put that profit into giving their employees 
raises so they could increase productivity. Now they have to forgo the 
raises because there is no money there to do it with.

  When you take money out of the payroll, especially when so many 
American businesses are having trouble meeting that Friday payroll, you 
either detract from the amount of money you are paying the present 
employees or you have to lay off employees. That is what this health 
care bill is all about. It kills jobs and it degrades jobs.
  Let me tell the American people what the CONSAD study says. I want to 
read the States and I am going to read the numbers of jobs that are 
lost and the number of jobs that are downgraded because of President 
Clinton's second plan, that is Clinton-Gephardt.
  Alabama, they lose 13,000 jobs; 716,000 jobs affected. Alaska, Alaska 
loses 1,200 jobs; 74,000 jobs are affected.
  Arizona loses 11,000 jobs; 641,000 jobs are affected. Arkansas loses 
7,000 jobs; 398,000 jobs are affected in Arkansas.
  California, my State, loses 108,000 jobs. Over half the jobs that we 
lost with the aerospace flight are going to be lost with the Clinton 
health care plan. Over 5 million jobs will be affected.
  Colorado, 11,000 jobs are lost; 638,000 jobs are affected. 
Connecticut, 15,000 jobs are lost under the Clinton health care plan; 
796,000 jobs are affected. Delaware, 2,800 jobs are lost under the 
Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; 154,000 jobs are affected.
  District of Columbia, 4,900 jobs are lost. That is like a large 
company leaving the District of Columbia and taking all of its jobs 
with them, except in this case, the jobs do not go anywhere, they are 
just destroyed. But under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, 4,900 
jobs are lost in the District of Columbia; 240,000 jobs are downgraded.

                              {time}  2110

  Florida, 41,000 jobs are lost, 2.3 million jobs are downgraded; 
Georgia, 23,000 jobs are lost, 1,200,000 jobs are downgraded under the 
Clinton-Gephardt health care plan.
  Idaho, 2,000 jobs are lost, 153,000 jobs affected; Illinois, 47,000 
jobs are lost, 2,478,000 jobs are affected, Indiana, 22,000 jobs are 
lost, 1,168,000 jobs are affected; Iowa, 9,000 jobs are lost, 530,000 
jobs are affected.
  Kansas, 8,000 jobs are lost, 469,000 jobs are affected or downgraded 
under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; Kentucky, 11,000 jobs are 
lost, 610,000 jobs are downgraded; Louisiana, 11,000 jobs are lost, 
645,000 jobs are downgraded.
  Maine, 4,000 jobs are lost, 227,000 jobs are downgraded under the 
Clinton-Gephardt health care plan; Maryland, 16,000 jobs are lost, 
953,000 jobs are downgraded; Massachusetts, 29,000 jobs are lost, 1.4 
million jobs are downgraded; Michigan, 36,000 jobs are lost, 1.8 
million jobs are downgraded.
  Minnesota, 18,000 jobs are lost, 931,000 jobs are downgraded; 
Mississippi, 7,000 jobs are lost, 375,000 are downgraded; Missouri, 
20,000 jobs are lost in Missouri under the Clinton-Gephardt health care 
plan, and over 1 million jobs are downgraded; Montana, 1,700 jobs are 
lost in the Big Sky country, 105,000 jobs are downgraded.

  Nebraska, 5,000 jobs are lost, 313,000 jobs are downgraded; Nevada, 
6,400 jobs are lost, 320,000 jobs are downgraded; New Hampshire, 4,000 
jobs lost, 223,000 jobs downgraded, New Jersey, 29,000 jobs lost under 
the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan, 1.6 million jobs downgraded in 
New Jersey.
  New Mexico, 3,000 jobs lost, 205,000 jobs downgraded; New York, 
76,000 jobs lost in New York under the Clinton-Gephardt health care 
plan, 3.9 million jobs downgraded; North Carolina, 28,000 jobs lost, 
1.4 million jobs are downgraded; North Dakota, 1,600 jobs lost, 96,000 
jobs downgraded.
  Ohio, 44,000 jobs lost, 2.26 million jobs downgraded; Oklahoma, 8,000 
jobs lost, 466,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt 
health care plan; Oregon, 8,000 jobs are lost, 499,000 jobs downgraded.
  Pennsylvania, here is a whopper, 47,000 jobs are lost in Pennsylvania 
under Clinton-Gephardt, 2,453,000 jobs are downgraded; Rhode Island, 
3,800 jobs lost, 202,000 jobs downgraded; South Carolina, 12,000 jobs 
lost, 681,000 downgraded; South Dakota, 1,700 jobs lost, 103,000 jobs 
downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care plan.
  Tennessee, 19,000 jobs lost, 987,000 jobs downgraded; Texas, 55,000 
jobs lost, 3 million jobs are downgraded. No wonder Texans, Democrat 
and Republican, have not been happy about this brand of socialized 
medicine.
  Utah, 5,000 jobs lost, 309,000 jobs downgraded; Vermont, 1,800 jobs 
lost, 102,000 jobs downgraded; Virginia, 21,000 jobs lost, 1.2 million 
jobs downgraded.
  Washington, 16,000 jobs lost, 936,000 jobs downgraded; West Virginia, 
4,000 jobs lost, 238,000 jobs downgraded; Wisconsin, 19,000 jobs lost, 
1,100,000 jobs are downgraded under the Clinton-Gephardt health care 
plan. We end up with Wyoming, 930 jobs lost, 60,000 jobs downgraded.
  Mr. Speaker, it is clear that this administration and a few Members 
on the Democrat side are willing to sacrifice American jobs for 
Government control of health care.
  Mr. Speaker, I did not give the figures of jobs that are going to be 
lost under so-called Clinton-Mitchell, but I would say that it is not 
going to be much less than the jobs that are lost under Clinton-
Gephardt, which are close to 1 million jobs, and there are a couple of 
other things about the Mitchell plan, the Clinton-Mitchell plan, that I 
think are important to talk to the American people about.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the author of the plan, Senator 
Mitchell, July 21, 1994. He said these words: ``Our plans will be less 
bureaucratic,'' he said this, ``more voluntary, and will be phased in 
over a longer period of time.''
  Let me just read to you a few of the 50 new Government agencies that 
we are going to establish if we pass the Clinton-Mitchell health care 
plan. Ready to go? Fifty new bureaucracies.
  He said this is going to be less bureaucratic and more voluntary. Let 
me tell you about a few of the non-voluntary bureaucracies which are 
going to be employing hundreds of thousands of new Federal workers.
  We are going to have a National Health Benefits Board. That is 
section 1211. We are going to have the Health Insurance Purchasing 
Cooperatives set up by States or local governments. That is section 
1321.

  There will be the Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperative set up by 
the Federal Office of Personnel Management, section 1341. We are going 
to have a National Guaranty Fund for Multi-State Self-Insured Plans.
  We are going to have an assistant secretary for the Office of Rural 
Health Policy. We are going to have a Federal Accreditation, 
Certification and Enforcement Program. That is going to be called ACE.
  We are going to have a State Accreditation, Certification, and 
Enforcement Program under section 1501. We are going to have a Health 
Plan Service That is under section 1502
  We are going to have State Risk Adjustment Organizations. That is 
section 1504. We are going to have an Advisory Committee for Risk 
Adjustment Programs, section 1504.
  We are going to have State Guaranty Funds. That is section 1505. We 
are going to have State Public Access Sites for Medically Underserved 
Areas, 1508. We are going to have the Prescription Drug Payment Review 
Commission, that is section 2004.
  Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, let me just say with respect to drugs and 
the cost of medicines in America, the reason you don't want to have 
socialized medicine in America is this: An interesting fact that a lot 
of Americans discovered after the First Lady and the President went on 
their binge against the companies that develop medicines and cures, we 
discovered--and this was a surprise to me, and I think to a lot of our 
constituents across the country, but it is a fact--the United States of 
America develops more cures for diseases than all the rest of the 
nations of the world combined.
  Isn't that incredible? That means you take Great Britain, France, 
Germany, Canada, all the rest of these civilized nations, and Third 
World nations, and you add them all up, and the good old United States 
of America, that has what the Democrat leadership calls this backward 
system, produces more cures that save the lives of your family and 
families around the world that all the rest of these so-called 
progressive nations, remember, Cuba is in that group, too, combined.
  Why do we produce more cures than all the rest of the nations 
combined? I would submit it is not because Japan does not have great 
universities, and probably some pretty smart people; it is not because 
France and Great Britain do not have good universities. It is because 
none of them have the free enterprise system that we have.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a gentleman in San Diego, a friend of mine named 
Bill Otterson, who suffers from a fairly rare disease. He and some 
other folks told me about a drug called Intron-A. Intron-A tells you 
why you do not want to pull the free enterprise system out of the 
development of medicine.

                              {time}  2120

  Intron-A costs $100 million to develop and when they first put it 
together, when they first took a chance on it and decided to burn up 
$100 million and bet that it would be a winner, they knew that there 
was only a small group of Americans initially who would be able to 
access or use that drug, and that was this very small pool of people 
who have what is known as hairy cell leukemia, a very unique type of 
leukemia. There are only about 1,000 folks in the United States who 
have that brand of leukemia. Yet a group of private investors put $100 
million forward to develop this drug called Intron-A. They knew that 
initially it would take care of folks that had hairy cell leukemia. Of 
course those folks were pretty happy it was being developed. But they 
thought it also might, if it succeeded and if their gamble paid off, be 
able to address 17 or 18 other types of diseases. They were right. 
Today Intron-A is used to treat about 17 or 18 major diseases. It is a 
big success. It brings in about $500 million a year to the United 
States from countries all over the world that use it. It was dropped 
because we have a free enterprise system. All those people, including 
people like Bill Otterson who are themselves afflicted with these 
medical diseases that are treated by these miracle drugs say, ``Please 
don't socialize medicine'' because if Mrs. Clinton, respectfully, had 
been around to tell the Intron-A people, ``If you develop Intron-A and 
put $100 million of your own money into it, I am only going to let you 
charge $1 a pill when you develop it,'' would it ever have been 
developed? Would the people who have hairy cell leukemia ever have had 
a chance to be cured or helped? Would Bill Otterson and the other 
hundreds of thousands who now use Intron-A to save their lives have a 
chance to have it? Absolutely not.
  Mr. Speaker, the consensus of the medical community, including 
experts from places likes Johns Hopkins and other great medical centers 
is, if we socialize medicine and the creation of new medical cures, 
what the companies will do is simply this: They will go to a system in 
which they do not take any medical risks, because nobody is going to go 
out and put $50 million into a drug that you can only get $1 a pill 
for. So what they will do is they will take our present inventory of 
drugs and they will incrementally increase the capability of those 
drugs. They will try to research them a little bit and make them a 
little bit better, but they will never go out there and try to whip 
that new disease that nobody has beaten so far. They will not find a 
cure for cancer. They will not find any of the wonderful cures that 
America has found under freedom. it is kind of interesting, is it not?
  A person does not have to be a wealthy person to understand how very, 
very important it is to have a free enterprise system in which people 
go out and take a risk and having taken a risk, they develop a system 
that saves lives by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the 
millions.
  Mr. Speaker, I see my friend, the gentleman from Maryland has come to 
the floor and I would be happy to yield to him if he wants me to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I was working in my office and happened to see his 
discourse and, of course, there is nobody else on the floor, so there 
was not an opportunity for somebody perhaps to give the gentleman a 
question.
  The gentleman referred to the Clinton plan as socialized medicine. He 
then referred to the Gephardt plan as well, as if they were the same. 
But in any event, would my friend describe for me what he perceives to 
be socialized medicine?

  Mr. HUNTER. I would be happy to describe it.
  In the first Clinton plan that was initiated----
  Mr. HOYER. I am not asking the gentleman about the Clinton plan at 
this point in time. What does my friend describe socialized medicine as 
being?
  Mr. HUNTER. My answer to my friend is it is a system in which not 
only is the medical service itself controlled, which is a pure 
socialized medicine that is practiced in some other places, but also a 
system in which the financing of the medical system is controlled.
  If the gentleman would listen, I had read about 10 of the various new 
Federal Government agencies that will control medicine under the plan 
that is being developed by the Democrat leader in the Senate.
  I think at least what I have seen of the Gephardt-Clinton plan is we 
are going to have a lot of government agencies helping to run that 
plan. So my answer to the gentleman is it is a system in which the 
financing----
  Mr. HOYER. Does the gentleman believe that Medicare is a socialized 
system?
  Mr. HUNTER. I think it is a small piece of a socialized system, yes.
  Mr. HOYER. Would my friend be in favor of eliminating Medicare?
  Mr. HUNTER. No, I would not.
  Mr. HOYER. So the gentleman likes a little bit of socialized 
medicine?
  Mr. HUNTER. No, I would say to the gentleman who says that Medicare 
is a little bit of socialism----
  Mr. HOYER. I did not say that.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I am going to take my time back and I am 
going to answer my friend freely, and I am going to allow him to answer 
me freely.
  To the gentleman and others who would say that Social Security is a 
little bit of socialism and that Medicare is a little bit of socialism, 
my answer to them would be that we have built a system around that and 
we now have built thousands and millions of Americans who now have, for 
better or for worse, become part of those programs, who have put their 
money in, and who now feel that they have a contract with government 
that took money that they might have better used in other programs and 
that those people are now locked into those programs.
  I would submit to my friend that that is not a rationale for now 
creating a new Medicare Type C which the Gephardt-Clinton plan does, 
which will now bring almost 50 percent of the American population under 
Medicare.
  So my answer to my friend is no. The fact that we have a Medicare 
program, which incidentally my friend knows that the costs are going up 
fairly radically in that program and that people have paid their money 
and many Americans feel they now have a contract.
  How many times has the gentleman had a senior citizen said, ``You 
know, if you had let me keep my money and do something else with it''--
whether it is Social Security, Medicare, or other things--``I could 
have done a lot better than government did for me. But since you did 
it, I want mine''?
  Mr. HOYER. If my friend would yield, I have never had anybody on 
Medicare tell me that. I have heard that on Social Security, where they 
thought they could have put it into an annuity program, but I have 
frankly never had anyone tell me that on Medicare. But let me ask the 
gentleman a question----
  Mr. HUNTER. Before my friend asks me a question, let me ask him a 
question.
  Is the gentleman saying that because Medicare exists and is part of 
our system now--and the gentleman is a Democrat leader, he is a 
distinguished member of the leadership, he has been through this 
analysis in which he has seen that there are a lot of problems in 
Canada, there are a lot of problems in Great Britain with rationing, 
there are problems in Canada where they have run out of money. I am 
sure the gentleman read The Washington Post that the biggest hospital 
in Ontario ran out of money.
  Does the gentleman think the fact that we have a Medicare system and 
it is a small part of our health care now, is a reason to extend it or 
to extend government control to the entire system?
  Mr. HOYER. Let me say, that is a major part----
  Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman asked me a question. I want to ask it back 
to him.
  Mr. HOYER. I understand, and I am going to answer.
  I would say to my friend, the reason I came over here, the gentleman 
talked very glibly about socialized medicine and very frankly, 
opponents of this bill are going around the country scaring people with 
socialized medicine. We do have socialized medicine as the gentleman 
knows in this country.
  Mr. HUNTER. First I want to take my time back for a second and just 
say this to my friend who is a member of the Democrat leadership. The 
Clinton I plan was not killed by a Republican. As the gentleman knows, 
they outnumber us by 100 votes in this House. It was killed by members 
of his caucus, Democrats, who went home and talked to their people who 
initially when they heard about health security said, ``Hey, we're for 
that.'' When his people read the bill, they did not like it.
  Mr. HOYER. So the gentleman's proposition is that the Clinton I plan 
was killed?
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I am reclaiming my time. The gentleman will 
have to suffer that. I have suffered that with him many times in our 
debates over the years.
  Reclaiming my time, your voters read the bill. They read the first 
Clinton bill and they came back and told the gentleman, ``As a 
Democrat, I don't like it.''
  When the first Clinton plan----
  Mr. HOYER. So the gentleman's proposition is the Clinton plan is 
dead?
  Mr. HUNTER. Let me finish my statement and I guarantee I will let my 
friend answer.
  When the first Clinton plan came up for a vote in the House Committee 
on Ways and Means, I understand that not a single Democrat Congressman 
voted for it. So that was not a result of Republicans glibly scaring 
people, that was a result of people reading the plan and being scared 
because of what it did to them.
  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield, I appreciate the fact he says 
the Clinton plan was killed. My point is this, though: We ought to have 
an honest debate about this. No American, or very few, are looking for 
socialized medicine. I would suggest to my friend that we do have a 
form of socialized medicine in America as my friend knows.

                              {time}  2130

  That is the health care that is given to our members of the armed 
services in the sense the hospitals are owned by the Government, the 
doctors work for the Government, and the members of the military go to 
the doctors who are available to them.
  I do not criticize that system. It is, however, I would suggest to my 
friend, in the classic sense a socialized system because the doctors 
work for the Government, the nurses work for the Government, the 
technicians in the hospital work for the Government, and the hospital 
itself is owned by the Government, and that is socialized medicine, 
that is Government delivery of health services.
  What concerns me, and I know the gentleman does not want to do this, 
is that we mislead the American people. There is nothing in either 
Clinton I, or the Gephardt plan, or the Mitchell plan which suggests 
that the doctors work for the Government. There is nothing that 
suggests that the hospitals be bought by the Government and in effect 
socialize, if you will. There is nothing to suggest that in fact the 
choice of the citizens will be restricted in their doctor or hospital 
by any of the plans that I know of and, therefore, I think if we are 
going to be honest in terms of our debate with the American public, we 
can differ, and the gentleman can take positions and say I do not like 
this proposal, but to characterize it as socialized medicine, I would 
suggest to my friend, is simply inaccurate by any proper definition of 
what socialized medicine is.
  In fact, Medicare, I would suggest to my friend, from my perspective 
is not socialized medicine. It is, he is correct, as single-payer 
system where the Government collects money and pays the medical 
providers. But as my friend knows, those on Medicare choose their 
doctors who work for themselves, who work for an HMO or work for a 
hospital. They choose their hospital, not owned by the Government. In 
fact, it is a reimbursement to the private sector. And I would suggest 
further to my friend the fact that we have had that medical insurance 
system for our senior citizens has not only given them a much healthier 
environment and much healthier population for senior citizens, it has 
also done some of the things that my friend was talking about in terms 
of allowing sufficient funds in the system to provide for research, to 
provide for innovation, to provide for entrepreneurship.
  So I would suggest to my friend that this plan is very much like in 
many respects a plan that already works.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank my friend for his statement and I want to reclaim 
my time and address his first statement.
  The care that is given to members of the Armed Forces, I would 
suggest, is not socialized medicine for a very simple reason. It the 
gentleman watched, as I did, our troops who went ashore at Normandy 
into that hail of bullets, or watched some of the deprivations that 
have taken place in the Somalia situation before that, Desert Storm 
before that, and many, many military operations, military people who 
sign up for a contract with their employer, who happens to be Uncle 
Sam, he is not an employer down the street getting something for 
signing up.
  Mr. HOYER. I am not criticizing.
  Mr. HUNTER. I am not yielding to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. You are taking it as a criticism. I am not criticizing at 
all.
  Mr. HUNTER. I am not saying the gentleman is criticizing the 
military, but I want to make the point, and I would not want the 
gentleman to interrupt me.
  The point is that people who serve in the armed services give 
something for their medical care. They give service to their country.
  Mr. HOYER. Nobody questions that. It is the same kind of thing, the 
reason I came over here. Nobody questions that.
  Mr. HUNTER. I ask for regular order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Clyburn). The time is controlled by the 
gentleman from California.
  Mr. HUNTER. I just want to make this point that the gentleman said 
you could describe that as socialized medicine. I do not describe that 
as socialized medicine because people who serve their country have 
given to their employer, they have made a contract with them, and they 
have received something in return.
  A very important question was asked during the debate that we had on 
health care, the Oxford-style debate. The question was asked of one of 
the gentleman's side of the aisle, and this was when the first Clinton 
health care plan came up, and I want to ask the gentleman about it. 
They said what if you have somebody who says, ``I ain't working. I 
refuse to work and I want to lounge around, and I want to watch 
television, and I want free health care''? The question was never 
answered. So does that person get health care under Clinton I? The 
question was never answered.
  That person to me is a different person from a person who joins the 
military and serves their country under a contract. I would just ask 
the gentleman the same question that was asked during the Oxford 
debates concerning Clinton I. In Clinton II or the Gephardt plan that 
we are now talking about, what happens there to somebody who says, ``I 
simply want health care. I want to sign up and have free health care, 
and I don't intend to work for it, and I don't intend to pay for it.'' 
What happens to that person, and I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Frankly, my opinion is that as we adopt welfare reform and 
health care reform, which are going to be very closely intertwined, as 
the gentleman knows, that that person ought not to get health care. 
Very frankly, what the President has said, what we believe on this side 
of the aisle is those who play by the rules ought to be able to 
participate in the system. In my opinion, that person is not playing 
by the rules.

  Mr. HUNTER. Let me answer that point and then I will yield to the 
gentleman for a second statement.
  I looked through the first Clinton plan to look for the answer to 
that question. If somebody says, ``I just want to be lazy and I want 
free health care,'' what would he do? I cannot find a provision that 
says that they do not get health care. I just want to ask the 
gentleman, I have not read a provision in the Gephardt-Clinton plan yet 
that says that that person will not be served. Has the gentleman got an 
answer? Is there a provision denying that coverage to a person who 
simply refuses to work?
  Mr. HOYER. Frankly, I do not have the answer to that question, but I 
will get it so I can point to the provision.
  But again, let me reiterate on that aspect. Under welfare reform, as 
the President has proposed it, and as I hope we pass it, it is going to 
say to people, first of all, if you just want to sit around, if you 
want to not work and you are able, and you want to be lazy, you are off 
the system, you are not playing by the rules, and we are not going to 
support you. Hardworking Americans ought not to be supporting people 
like that, and frankly, it ought to tie into health care.
  Having said that, let me go back to the central question, because the 
gentleman tried to say oh, we are for the military. I am a strong 
supporter of the military as the gentleman knows. Under the Reagan 
administration I was a strong supporter of the buildup.
  Having said that, I am not questioning the validity of a program 
which offers to our men and women in the armed services health care. 
They ought to have it, and we send them to places where they cannot 
access it. So what we do is we provide it.
  But my suggestion of the gentleman, and he wants to avoid I fear the 
question because he would much prefer to politically tell the American 
public that what we are proposing is a socialized system, but it is 
not. My point is that by any fair definition, a socialized system is a 
system in which the government owns either the means of production or 
the means of the delivery of the service. Clinton I did not propose it, 
Gephardt is not proposing it and Mitchell does not propose it, and it 
is not accurate for the gentleman to tell the American people on one of 
the most important issues that confront them as a people, I suggest to 
you, as families and individuals that we are proposing or that people 
are proposing a socialized system. That simply is not true.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for his statement. I am going to 
have the last word and then yield to the chairman of the Rules 
Committee.
  My last statement is this: The gentleman left out one category of 
socialization, and that is the socialization of the means of financing. 
I would simply submit to my friend that under Clinton I, Clinton II, or 
Clinton III, meaning Clinton-Gephardt or Clinton-Mitchell, the means of 
financing is controlled by Government and is socialized. Even though 
the doctors are private ostensibly and are hired in a private capacity, 
the means of financing the system is socialized.
  I yield briefly to the gentleman
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. He does control the time and he has 
given me the time to have this discourse with him, which hopefully will 
be helpful to the American public, who will ultimately have to make 
this decision and tell us what they think. The fact is insurance 
companies, private sector insurance companies will continue to be 
involved in the system of selling insurance to employers and employees 
and individuals involved in the system.
  Yes, the gentleman is correct. The Medicare Part C provides for those 
in some respects who cannot afford insurance or employers and employees 
who choose the Part C aspect. But the fact is we do not replace the 
private sector insurance.
  Mr. HUNTER. I would suggest to my friend that the private sector is 
used by Government in this sense by making business pay for this plan 
by the 80-20 split, or what you might call the 50-50 split in the 
Mitchell plan. By forcing that payment they are using what otherwise 
would be funds of private people just as surely as if they took them 
out of general revenues and ran the plan themselves.

                              {time}  2140

  So in my estimation, the financing of the system is a socialized 
method of financing, very clever, very subtle, has exactly the same 
affect, and with that, I have enjoyed this exchange of views with my 
friend from Maryland, and I will defer to the chairman of the Committee 
on Rules.

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