[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6482-H6483]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Stearns). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I support the health care reform 
legislation that is known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill because it 
would make it easier for workers who lose or change jobs to buy health 
insurance coverage, and it would limit the length of time that insurers 
could refuse to cover a preexisting medical problem.
  Essentially what this legislation does in its original form is to 
simply make it easier for people to get health insurance because we 
know that fewer and fewer people, fewer and fewer Americans today have 
health insurance as compared to, say, 5 or 10 years ago. But I should 
point out, Mr. Speaker, that this legislation was originally crafted to 
keep premiums affordable because it would not impact the insurance risk 
pool by encouraging healthy individuals to drop coverage.
  It had bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House of 
Representatives in its original form, and the President indicated that 
he would support it or sign the bill in his State of the Union Address. 
However, from the very beginning the Republican leadership in the House 
insisted on messing up this very simple legislation with controversial 
poison pill amendments.
  I mention this today because this morning during special orders the 
Speaker, Speaker Gingrich, got up and talked about how good this 
legislation was. But He refused or he did not mention, I should say, 
one of the provisions that he and others in the Republican leadership 
insist on including. That is the poison pill of the medical savings 
accounts, or MSAs, which will favor the healthy and the wealthy and 
will be just another tax shelter for the rich. I say this because 
Americans who do not choose to join the MSAs because of the high risks 
involved will see their health insurance premiums actually increase, 
and the MSAs among other extraneous provisions that have been placed in 
the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill here in the House will guarantee the failure 
of any health insurance reform in the Congress.
  I just wanted to read, if I could, a section from the Washington Post 
editorial on April 9, 1996, where they explained in some detail why 
MSAs would essentially drive up insurance costs and ultimately cause 
fewer people to have insurance, just the opposite of what the Kennedy-
Kassebaum bill is intended to do. It says in this editorial that the 
goal of the underlying bill is to strengthen the health insurance 
system by making it easier for people who can afford it to remain 
insured between jobs.
  Mainly it would help the part of the population that already has 
insurance rather than one-seventh that largely for reasons of cost does 
not. But the likely effect of medical savings accounts would be to push 
in the opposite direction, weaken the insurance system and in the end 
add to the number of uninsured.
  If the medical savings proposal becomes law, those who chose would 
buy so-called catastrophic insurance policies that kick in only after 
the first $3,000 or so of annual expenses.
  The savings accounts would also likely split the insurance market. 
They

[[Page H6483]]

represent a gamble. People who would most likely take the gamble would 
be the healthier and better off. To some degree, they would be choosing 
to withdraw from the broader insurance pool to fend for themselves. 
Left in the pool would be the more vulnerable, who would likely see 
their insurance costs go up; the increase would make insurance even 
harder to maintain than now.
  In a sense this is the very opposite of the insurance principle. It 
is being pushed by companies that want to sell catastrophic coverage, 
plus people drawn to the individual responsibility that the idea 
entails, but for the population as a whole, it would do more harm than 
good. The President has rightly suggested that he would be disposed to 
veto a bill that included these accounts.
  Well, the bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is that the Republican health 
plan with these MSAs would raise premiums for average Americans and 
make insurance less affordable. Hence fewer people would be able to get 
insurance under this bill. It is nothing more than a payback to the 
Golden Rule Insurance Co. Golden Rule has made big contributions to the 
Republicans and will reap big profits if the MSA proposal becomes law. 
Of the $1.2 million contribution that has been given to the Republicans 
by the Golden Rule president, J. Patrick Rooney and his family, even 
more has been given to other GOP candidates and causes. What causes.
  What I am trying to say, Mr. Speaker, is essentially that Speaker 
Gingrich got on the floor this morning and talked about what he is 
trying to do for health care reform. He neglects to mention that 
essentially he is trying to sabotage health insurance reform with the 
MSA provisions. This GOP provision provides no help for working 
families and just provides handouts for special interests. Essentially 
what we are seeing here is the Republican leadership jeopardizing 
health insurance reform by providing for rich man's insurance.

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