[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, there are really two questions that 
surround the whole health care debate. That is, who is going to run it 
and who is going to pay for it.
  Under the Clinton-Gephardt bill, the Government runs it. A large 
tangled web of agencies, commissions, bureaucrats, boards appointed, 
unappointed people, unelected. We will be running your health care.
  They will be telling us when we can pull the plug on our grandparents 
and our loved ones and when we can spend money for this operation and 
when we cannot. That is the reality of the Clinton plan.
  The other part of it, which I do not want, too, which I think we are 
not even focusing on one bit, is how it is going to be paid for. We do 
not know how much the Clinton-Gephardt bill is going to cost. The 
estimate is about $100 billion. We know the cigarette tax is going to 
be $12 to $16 billion in new tax revenues a year, if that passes. We 
know there will be massive Medicare cuts. We do not know how much.
  We already know physicians are having trouble servicing Medicare 
patients right now because of the low reimbursement. Then there is 
going to be an insurance premium tax, which if we are paying the 
insurance premium tax, then are we going to be paying these taxes?

                              {time}  1050

  The President said no new broad-based taxes. This is a major issue, 
and we need to address it. We need to talk about the costs of health 
care, because it sounds great, but if we do not have the money, with a 
$4.4 trillion debt, we do not need to be getting into further debt.

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