[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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. PRESSLER. Madam President, health care reform is important to us 
all. Many on this side of the aisle want health care reform. In fact, 
all of us on this side of the aisle want health care reform. However, 
we feel strongly that the bills being proposed by the majority party 
are too bureaucratic, too costly, and include too much Government 
regulation. In essence, we will have Government medicine. These 
concerns do not mean that we don't support efforts to reform our heatlh 
care system. We are for making improvements to our current system.
  We have the best health care system in the world. And yes, there is 
room for improvement. For example, there are many poor who need to have 
some assistance in buying health insurance. There are many in the 
middle class who are strapped with high premiums. We do need cost 
containment and malpractice reform. We do need to make insurance 
portable so that if a person goes from one job to another they are not 
caught without insurance. We do need to remove the preexisting 
condition.
  Many say that we are delaying action. Some have used the word 
``filibuster.'' That is not true. There is no filibuster. When we 
receive a new bill on a Friday afternoon, we need several days to look 
at it and to get some budget estimates before moving forward. Indeed, 
many people on the other side of the aisle will not go forward without 
those budget estimates and adequate time to study the bill. I applaud 
many of their speeches on that subject.
  So I think there is some misunderstanding in the country. We 
Republicans want health care reform. We want to tune up the system. I 
compare it to a farmer who has 10 machines in his garage, and of those 
10 machines, 2 need to be overhauled. He should not overhaul all 10. He 
should overhaul two and tune up the rest.
  The subject of malpractice reform is not understood very well across 
the country. It is my opinion that about 10 percent of the cost of 
medical care in this country comes from lawsuits and malpractice 
abuses. Certainly we want a citizen who is wronged to be able to sue. 
In the bills that have come from this side of the aisle, there has been 
a cap on lawyers' fees in lawsuits and a cap on certain damages, after 
the person is made economically whole, on certain types of damages. 
There are also proposals for prelitigation screening and other types of 
tort reform.
  The White House and the National Democratic Party are very much 
opposed to tort reform because they are so close to the national trial 
lawyers. I am just telling it the way it is. Certainly, the trial 
lawyers perform a very good function in the sense that it is the way in 
our society that a small person, or a person of modest means, can sue a 
great corporation or sue a very wealthy person. Some say we have, quite 
accurately, had our revolutions in the courtroom rather than on the 
streets because that is the way people who are poor and who have been 
wronged in our society get relief, by going to a lawyer and getting a 
contingency fee and bringing a lawsuit against a great corporation.
  So we do not want to take away that right. But we do want to have 
tort reform in the sense that the number of lawsuits in our society has 
reached a ridiculous rate. It is not helping the poor anymore. It is 
sort of a lottery system almost, and it means that many of our small-
town hospitals have to carry very expensive insurance and our doctors 
have to carry very expensive insurance.
  So we are very much for malpractice reform, and that falls on most of 
the bills that have come from this side of the aisle.
  In conclusion, Madam President, let me say this Senator is ready to 
legislate and has been. In fact, I gave a speech on the Senate floor a 
year ago April urging that we bring some things up for votes.
  We are ready to go, but let us work together to have something that 
is budgetarily possible, something that takes care of the problems in 
our society. About 20 percent of our people have problems with their 
insurance or getting insurance or with the high costs. Let us tune up 
the rest to reduce the costs, have cost containment, tort reform, and 
insurance reforms. We don't need to start creating new Government 
programs. Those are some things we should be doing and that we want to 
do in this session. We can do it very quickly. But what we do not want 
to do is adopt massive Government insurance, massive Government 
spending, massive new Government offices, 98,000 new Government 
employees, and so forth.

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