[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 27, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2892-H2894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1615
                THE URGENT NEED TO IMPROVE OUR EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ewing). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is 
recognized for 45 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield first to the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina [Mrs. Clayton].
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to 
share some of his special order time.
  Mr. Speaker, today is the last day of the National Education Summit 
that is being held in New York.
  Governors and business leaders from across the Nation recognize the 
urgent need to deal with America's education dilemma.
  Most Americans, too, recognize the need to improve our education 
system so that every child can have a chance to learn, develop, and to 
realize his or her full potential, and in doing so, to be able to make 
a contribution to society. Yet, many Americans understand, regrettably, 
that there are too many of our Nation's students who are not being 
prepared for success later in life, but are doomed to failure.
  They are in overcrowded classrooms, schools with poor curriculums, 
limited equipment, and low educational standards. Their teachers are 
underpaid and overworked. Too many of our students will drop out before 
completing high school if they are not challenged.
  Mr. Speaker, we are at an important crossroads in education. All 
levels of government, and the private sector, should be working 
together and investing more resources in education, not less resources.
  Again, most Americans are committed to investing more to improve our 
education system. Most Americans want to support our children and to 
ensure our Nation's future. And, if we understand the economics of 
education, we would know that quality education is a good investment.
  Too many of my Republican colleagues want to invest less in 
education--25 percent less in some cases. Others question whether the 
Federal Government should even have a role in education.

  But, the question should be which programs justify higher investment 
because they provide a sound economic payout? Which programs have 
worked and have proved their effectiveness? And, how can we insure 
quality performance and accountability?
  The Federal Government supports educational programs and 
opportunities that the States and local communities are unable to 
provide. Let me briefly mention three examples of such programs.
  The first is Head Start, Healthy Start, and other preschool 
programs--they have also proven their worth. These programs enable all 
children to be ready to learn when they enter school.
  These programs have been studied, researched, and assessed to 
determine their value, and the results prove that if they are of high 
quality, they dramatically increase the educational performance of 
participants throughout their lives.
  Investing in these programs gives back great payoffs for our society.
  Title I compensatory education funds is another proven program. Last 
year, the First Congressional District of North Carolina received 
$46,267,400 in title I funds. These funds provided support to 30 school 
districts.
  These funds provide for valuable teaching personnel and technology to 
disadvantaged school districts throughout the Nation.
  This program addresses critical needs, identified by local school 
systems and has an outstanding record of performance where the right 
staff ratio and application of resources have been made.
  The third example, Summer Youth Projects also have proven their value 
in addressing the need to give young people training and work 
experience during the summer.
  These projects oftentimes provide the first real work experience, a 
disciplined environment, and the programs teach responsibility for the 
tasks assigned and how to work cooperatively with others.
  Summer Youth Projects are effective in engaging young people in a 
constructive environment which contributes to their behavior and skill 
development.
  Moreover, these projects are insurance against violence and 
disruption in our neighborhoods when young people are unsupervised and 
idle.
  The three programs I have cited--the Pre-School Programs, Head Start, 
and Healthy Start; the Title I Program; and Summer Youth Employment--
are all good educational programs that are provided by the Federal 
Government and deserve continued and increased investment.
  These educational programs are a great payoff for our society. The 
programs can, certainly, be improved, can be made more effective. We 
should always seek to improve and to require full accountability for 
all resources. But, we should amend or reform our investment in the 
programs--not cripple or end them.
  Mr. Speaker, We are at a crossroads. We must make required reforms, 
improvement, and sufficient investment to provide a quality education 
system where every child--every child has a chance to learn, develop, 
and contribute.


                     health care reform legislation

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I am here today, because I wanted to 
discuss the health care reform legislation that we expect to come to 
the House floor tomorrow. I was at the Committee on Rules earlier 
today, and at some point today this afternoon or this evening I would 
expect that they would report out a rule on the health care reform. My 
concern is that the bill that will come to the floor tomorrow, rather 
than being the very simple legislation that was called for and endorsed 
by President Clinton during his State of the Union Address, instead it 
would be a much more controversial bill loaded up with many provisions 
that cannot be agreed upon on a bipartisan basis in this House and in 
the Senate and that

[[Page H2893]]

the rare opportunity that we have in this session in the next few weeks 
to pass meaningful health care reform essentially would be scuttled 
because of the language and because of the nature of the bill that 
Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership would bring to the floor 
tomorrow.
  Let me start out by saying that many of the Democrats that I work 
with were very pleased with it when the President, in his State of the 
Union Address, indicated that he would like to see brought to his desk 
and signed into law legislation that was initially sponsored in the 
Senate by Senator Kassebaum and also by Senator Kennedy on a bipartisan 
basis. The hallmark of this Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, if you will, is to 
address the issue of portability and the issue of preexisting 
conditions.
  Portability means your ability to take your health insurance with 
you, in other words, if you lose your job or you change jobs, that you 
would not lose your health insurance, that you would be able to carry 
it with you.
  In addition, when we talk about preexisting conditions, we are 
talking the fact that in many cases in many States, if an individual 
has a preexisting condition, health condition, where they are disabled 
or they were hospitalized for a period of time, that they find it 
difficult to buy health insurance because the insurers simply do not 
want to cover them because they think it is too much of a risk. It is 
estimated that something like 30 million Americans are impacted in some 
way because of problems associated with portability or preexisting 
conditions and that if this legislation, as originally introduced in 
the Senate by Senators Kennedy and Kassebaum, or here in the House, 
legislation that was introduced by the gentlewoman from New Jersey, 
Mrs. Roukema, who is my colleague, a Republican from the State of New 
Jersey, that if their bill were to become law, addressing these issues 
of portability and preexisting conditions, that about 30 million 
Americans would benefit in some way because they would be able to carry 
their insurance with them from one job to another or would be able to 
get health insurance even though they might have a preexisting 
condition.

  So when the President said that he was willing to sign this bill and 
urged the Congress in his State of the Union Address to move forward in 
passing this legislation, many of the Democrats were heartened, because 
we figured that even though this was a very small part of the health 
insurance reform, that it was something that was positive and we would 
like to see it moved.
  We had about, I think it is, up to 172 Democratic Members in this 
House who signed on as cosponsors to Congresswoman Roukema's bill and 
urged that the bill come to the floor exactly the way she had drafted 
the legislation. I should point out that I am actually the cochair, 
along with the gentlewoman from Missouri, Ms. McCarthy and the 
gentleman from California, Mr. Dooley, of the Democratic health care 
task force. We have two goals with our task force. One is to increase 
coverage, because we know a lot of Americans do not have health 
insurance coverage and the number that do not have coverage continues 
to grow. And a second goal is affordability. We know that health 
insurance is increasingly becoming more expensive and out of the reach 
of a lot of Americans. And so we would like to do what we can 
legislatively to make health insurance more affordable.
  Well, the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, the Roukema bill here in the House, 
achieves the purposes of increasing coverage, because more people would 
be able to obtain coverage through the portability and preexisting 
conditions provisions, and it certainly does not do anything to make 
health insurance less affordable. It might even help with the issue of 
affordability.
  So we were very happy with the legislation. Our task force endorsed 
the legislation. We had 172 Members of the House on the Democratic side 
that supported the legislation; very optimistic until we found out what 
the Republican leadership had in mind. We started to hear, a few weeks 
ago, that they were going to put this bill in various committees, that 
the various committees were going to come up with all sorts of 
approaches, some maybe which make sense, a lot which did not make any 
sense, that would be ideas or legislative provisions that would be 
added to the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, in an effort to try to load it up, 
if you will, with all kinds of controversial provisions that would make 
it more difficult to pass.

  Well, I believe that is what is happening. I believe, Mr. Speaker, 
that based on what the Committee on Rules is likely to do today, even 
though myself and other urged them not to, that the bill that comes to 
the floor tomorrow is going to be a lot more controversial and a lot 
more complex and a lot more loaded down with provisions that are not 
necessarily good for the American people and that the bill tomorrow is 
likely to have provisions providing for MSA's, which are medical 
savings accounts, it is likely to deal with malpractice issues, it is 
likely to deal with antitrust issues, it is likely to deal with a 
myriad of issues that have nothing to do with the original Kennedy-
Kassebaum.
  What that means is the Republican leadership is bringing this bill to 
the floor loaded down with all of these controversial provisions and 
essentially will kill the bill, because it will not pass. Even if it 
does pass here, it will not pass with Democratic support, it will not 
pass the Senate, and the President will not sign it.
  The worst part about this is the provisions that they intend to put 
in with regard to medical savings accounts, because there, unlike the 
original Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which expands coverage and which at 
best leaves the question of affordability the same, this will make 
health insurance more costly and less affordable to the average 
American.
  The principle of MSA's, or medical savings accounts, basically says 
that if you are a fairly healthy individual or if you are a fairly 
wealthy individual or if you happen to be both, then you basically put 
your money aside in a savings account that is not taxable, essentially, 
somewhat like an IRA.

                              {time}  1630

  You only have coverage for catastrophic illness. So therefore, since 
you do not really need to pay for a lot of health-related activities, 
because you are healthy or whatever, or because you can afford to pay 
when you do go to a doctor out of the medical savings account that you 
have been accumulating, that you enter into this sort of IRA, and at 
the end of the road, 10, 20 years down the road, you can simply take 
the money out of this MSA, like an IRA, and use it for other purposes 
unrelated to health.
  The problem is that it damages the risk pool. Health insurance is 
based on the notion of a risk pool. The idea is that both the healthy 
people and the people who are not as healthy are all part of the same 
pool. If you take out the ones that are the healthiest and leave the 
ones that are less healthy in the pool, the end result is that more 
money has to be paid out to cover their health care-related expenses, 
and therefore the premiums will go up for the people that remain in the 
pool and who have not opted for the medical savings account.
  So what we believe will happen is that if MSA legislation goes into 
effect, the cost for people who still buy the traditional health 
insurance and do not enter into a medical savings account will actually 
rise. Their premiums will go up, and therefore insurance for the 
average person becomes less affordable instead of more affordable.
  So we cannot, those of us who believe that we should be expanding 
coverage and making insurance more affordable, health insurance, simply 
cannot support the medical savings account. I am sure there are going 
to be people that do not support the malpractice changes and the 
antitrust changes, and all this good effort over the next few weeks to 
try to pass a clean bill that will simply address the issues of 
affordability, portability and preexisting conditions, as Kennedy-
Kassebaum would do, simply goes down the drain because this bill is 
loaded up with all the other things that are controversial and make it 
difficult for the bill to pass and ultimately be signed into law.
  I just wanted to make the point, if I could, in some commentaries 
that have come up over the last few weeks, to sort of back up some of 
the points that I just made on why we should have a

[[Page H2894]]

clean health care reform bill, rather than have it loaded up with all 
these other extraneous provisions.
  If I could just briefly read part of the editorial that was in the 
Washington Post on March 18 that says ``Bad Move on Health Care.'' It 
says exactly the way I and many of my colleagues on the Democratic side 
have felt, that:

       Not too many weeks ago it seemed as if Congress was about 
     to pass, and the president to sign, a modest bill to help 
     people keep their health insurance while between jobs. Not 
     even the principal sponsors, Sens. Nancy Kassebaum and Edward 
     Kennedy, describe the bill as more than a first step. It 
     would not help people to afford the insurance, just require 
     insurance companies to offer it to them. Still, it would be 
     an advance.
       Now, however, House Republicans are threatening to add to 
     the bill some amendments from their health care wish list 
     that could derail it. If some of these amendments are added, 
     the bill ought to be derailed. The worst is a proposal to 
     begin to subsidize through the Tax Code what are known as 
     medical savings accounts. The underlying bill seeks to 
     strengthen the health insurance system, if not by making it 
     seamless, at least by moving it in that direction. The 
     savings accounts would tend to fragment and weaken the system 
     instead. The Republicans in 1994 accused the President of 
     overreaching on health care reform, in part to satisfy 
     assorted interest groups. He ended up with nothing to put 
     before the voters on Election Day. They risk the same result.
       Under current law, if an employer helps buy health 
     insurance for his employees, he can deduct the costs.

  I do not need to get into all of this. The Washington Post is 
recognizing what we all know once again, which is that we have a good 
bill here as Senators Kassebaum and Kennedy have put forward, along 
with my colleague the gentlewoman from New Jersey [Mrs. Roukema] and it 
should not be loaded down with MSA's and all these other provisions.
  In fact, when this legislation went before the House Committee on 
Ways and Means, there were a number of Democrats who essentially 
expressed the same concern that I have, and they put out a dissenting 
view on the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. They referred to the bill that it 
should be the ``sink the good ship Kassebaum-Kennedy bill,'' because it 
was designed in every way to torpedo the passage of the modest helpful 
provisions of Kennedy-Kassebaum-Roukema.
  The bill as reported by the Committee on Ways and Means, according to 
the Democrats in dissent, is not health insurance reform. It includes 
only a weakened version of the group nondiscrimination provisions of 
Kennedy-Kassebaum-Roukema. Of course, they again go into the whole 
problem with the MSA's and the problems that I have outlined before 
with the medical savings accounts and what they would mean in terms of 
the average person's health insurance costs or premiums going up.

  In fact, we estimate that the proposal to include the medical savings 
accounts could end up costing taxpayers $2 to $3 billion overall, 
because essentially what the MSA's do is to encourage skimming or 
cherry-picking. The healthiest and wealthiest will leave traditional 
health insurance, thereby raising costs on everyone else. The large 
out-of-pocket costs and high deductible insurance costing thousands of 
dollars that result from the MSA's are especially unaffordable for 
middle-class families or for the recently unemployed, the very people 
who most need insurance reform.
  One of the things that many of the Democrats have also been pointing 
out about this legislation and the inclusion of the medical savings 
accounts is that it basically has been included by the Speaker and the 
Republican leadership in order to placate, if you will, one insurance 
company, the Golden Rule Insurance Co., and the person who is the 
leader of that by the name of J. Patrick Rooney. He and the Golden Rule 
Insurance Co. have actually given $1.2 million to Republican candidates 
and campaign committees, $157,000 to GOPAC, the Speaker's political 
action committee, and $45,000 to Speaker Gingrich's own reelection 
campaign.
  So essentially what we are seeing here again is special interests 
ruling the day, because the Golden Rule Insurance Co. felt that they 
would like to see the medical savings accounts proposal included in 
health insurance reform, because they have a lot to gain, because it is 
included, it is now in the bill, even though all the Democrats and 
probably most of the Republicans do not really want to see it there, 
because they know it will kill any real proposal for reform.
  The other thing I wanted to say is that many of the consumer groups 
have come out very much opposed to this larger grab-bag legislation, 
and most of the groups, whether it is the American Medical Association, 
the Independent Insurance Agents, or a number of other health care 
organizations, have indicated strong support for the Kennedy-Kassebaum 
bill and have indicated that they would like it brought to the floor as 
a clean bill, because it will work.
  I just wanted, Mr. Speaker, if I could for a minute, to talk about 
some of the things that the Consumers Union says about this legislation 
tomorrow and the fact that it has been loaded up with all these other 
provisions.
  They mention with regard to the medical savings accounts that the 
medical savings accounts disrupt the health insurance market by 
creating financial incentives that encourage division of health care 
risks. Actuarial studies conclude that MSA's would appeal to relatively 
healthy and wealthy individuals. The American Academy of Actuaries 
estimates the selection process could result in higher premiums, as 
much as 61 percent, for those remaining in traditional health insurance 
plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation also estimates that a deduction 
for MSA's would drain $1.8 billion from Federal revenues, compounding 
the national debt.
  So not only are the medical savings accounts a problem because they 
are going to take the healthiest and the wealthiest out of the 
insurance risk pool, not only are they bad because they are going to 
increase premiums for the average American, but they also have the real 
possibility of draining Federal revenues and actually compounding the 
problems that we have with the national debt.
  The Consumers Union also opposes the relaxed antitrust provisions for 
provider networks, it opposes the limitations on medical malpractice, 
it opposes the private health insurance duplication, and, again, on the 
issue of malpractice reform and antitrust, a lot of people disagree. I 
am not saying that the Consumers Union is right when they say that 
these provisions are necessarily bad, but why include them in this 
bill? Why go this route? When right now we know that we have an 
unbelievable consensus on a bipartisan basis for Democrats and 
Republicans to move forward with the Kennedy-Kassebaum-Roukema bill, 
why are we loading it up with all these other provisions that are 
controversial and in many cases are going to actually increase the cost 
of health care for the average American?
  It is nothing more than another example of how the Republican 
leadership in this House has put special interests first, has taken the 
interests of the wealthy and juxtaposed them against the interest of 
the average American. Hopefully some sense will prevail tomorrow. There 
will be a Democrat substitute offered that is essentially the Kennedy-
Kassebaum-Roukema bill in its clean form.

  I am hopeful that not only Democrats but Republicans will also 
support that substitute, and that we can get a clean bill passed here 
that deals with the issue of portability and also deals with the issue 
of preexisting conditions and has a good chance of passing in the 
Senate and ultimately going to the President. But we need to continue 
to speak out, Mr. Speaker. We have to continue to point out that that 
is the proper vehicle for this House to consider tomorrow, and not this 
larger piece of legislation that addresses all these controversial 
issues and makes it much more difficult for us to get rational health 
insurance reform in this session of Congress.

                          ____________________