[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 111 (Thursday, August 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              THE HEALTH CARE PLAN: WE CAN DO MUCH BETTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the debate 
that we are about to enter, the health care debate, and I want to lay 
out the proposition that we can do much better than the plan that is 
out in front of us today.
  Last night, nine health care bills were turned in to the Committee on 
Rules, nine new health care bills. I have to give the chairman of the 
Committee on Rules credit. He took those nine bills and inserted them 
into the House Record so that this afternoon we were able to receive 
copies of those nine new bills and begin the process of understanding 
what is in each of those bills.
  Take a look at the process that is currently laid out in front of us. 
On August 10 we get nine bills. On August 11 we receive the actual 
verbiage that is found in those nine bills.
  I testified in front of the Committee on Rules this afternoon 
proposing an open rule, but knowing that that is probably very 
unlikely, and also knowing that today I had to propose two amendments, 
an amendment on wellness and an amendment on States' rights, providing 
States with the options to choose whether they wanted to participate in 
a national health care program without really knowing what is in the 
bills.
  I am part of the Committee on Education and Labor. We went through 
the Clinton bill, the original Clinton bill. We had 29 days of 
hearings. We had 8 full weeks of markup where we actually went through 
the amendment process, and we went through the bill section by section. 
We had 4 weeks in subcommittee; we had 4 weeks in full committee. In 
full committee we had proposed 99 amendments: 44 Democratic amendments 
were accepted, and 11 Republican amendments were accepted, 55 
improvements to the Clinton bill, and that is all gone now, because we 
have a new Clinton-Gephardt bill.
  So what is the process going to be when we come to the full House? 
What took place for 8 full weeks in committee and subcommittee, at 
least the schedule that is right in front of us now says we are going 
to complete that same process for nine bills in 8 days.

                              {time}  1800

  This House may be good, but I do not think we are that good.
  I got a summary today, about a 30-page summary, of the Clinton-
Gephardt bill. What do we know is in it? We know there are employer 
mandates in it, we know there are new taxes in the bill, we know there 
are subsidies for small business, we know those subsidies will phase 
out by the year 2005.
  Generally, we know that there are exemptions to the bill. In our 
Committee on Education and Labor we created perhaps one of the most 
unique exemptions, by name we exempted the State of Hawaii. When I 
glanced at the summary of the Clinton-Gephardt bill, I saw there was an 
exemption for States with single-payer systems. Does that mean this 
House language that we put in place, again, the basis for the State of 
Hawaii to exempt itself from the national health care plan?
  There were waivers for parts of the State of Tennessee. There was a 
waiver for Milwaukee. Why are these in there? Do we again have to 
propose to the full House the amendment defeated in the subcommittee 
and in full committee that said no State shall become a participating 
State in a national health care plan unless the voters of that State 
decide through a referendum process to become part of the national 
health care plan?
  We know that there are penalties in this bill, penalties because we 
have created more paperwork. We have gone to health care providers and 
said that on an annual or quarterly basis, ``You will be mandated to 
provide these type of reports, and if you do not, you will be facing 
these types of penalties.''
  We know that there is tort reform, or so-called tort reform. The tort 
reform in this bill appears to say that the innovation in the tort 
reform that has gone on at the State level will be preempted by what we 
are going to do here on the Federal level. This is a significant 
victory for the trial lawyers.
  I found these parts and these topics in the Clinton-Gephardt bill, 
from a 32-page summary of the bill. It appears that when I finally have 
the full bill, it will be close to somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 
pages.
  What else is in the bill, and exactly how do we come up with 
mandates? How many new taxes do we have? Who do they affect? What kind 
of subsidies do we have? For how long? Who is exempted? How do other 
parts of the country become exempted? Who is facing penalties? Who is 
facing criminal charges?

  Who really benefits from tort reform?
  Just in the Clinton-Gephardt bill there are way too many questions to 
be answered in the next days. And remember that we have 8 other bills 
that we should fully consider.
  Now is not the time to move from outside of the committee process. 
Now is the time to really utilize the committees and use the House to 
fully understand, debate, and move forward on health care, but not in 8 
days.
  As freshman Republicans, we laid out a schedule. We said when the 
bills are submitted, let us have each sponsor of the bill walk us 
through the bill here on the floor of the House for a full day, allow 
that Member or that group of Members to take us through the bill step 
by step, section by section; allow us to go home to our constituents 
for 2 to 3 weeks to talk to our elderly, to talk to those without 
insurance, to talk to our small business people, to talk to our doctors 
and hospitals, to see how these bills will impact them.
  Then to come back, have 8 to 10 days of debate, to vote, to have a 
conference with the Senate, and still have a final vote before we 
adjourn in October. This is a better process, a process that this 
Congress can be proud of, that the American people can trust.
  It is time to reform how we do business in Washington. The process 
that we set up for the health care debate over the next 2 months will 
say a lot about this Congress. Are we going to compress it into 8 days? 
Or are we going to let the House work its will through a process of 8 
weeks?
  I hope we go for the process 8 weeks, it is a process that we can be 
proud of, it is a process that the country can be proud of.

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