[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 32 (Thursday, March 13, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1004-H1009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HEALTH CARE FOR OUR NATION'S CHILDREN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, once again, today I rise to draw the
attention of my colleagues to the problem of so many children in our
country who do not have health insurance, and I am very pleased that I
am going to be joined today by the gentlewoman from Oregon [Ms.
Hooley], who is here also to talk about the same issue because of her
concern about the fact that this Congress so far has not addressed the
issue.
I have been talking over the last few weeks, and I guess a couple of
months now, about various reports that have come out in various States;
we had one in New York City, and we had another one in Massachusetts.
We have had accounts in some of the Nation's major newspapers pointing
to the problem of increasing numbers of children that do not have
health insurance in this country.
Well, yesterday the Children's Defense Fund, which is certainly one
of the leading organizations that is an advocate for children, and
particularly on the issue of health care for children, released its
annual report on the state of America's children. And like so many
other reports congressional Democrats have been talking about here on
the House floor in recent weeks, the Children's Defense Fund report is
full of
[[Page H1005]]
disturbing information about the number of children that lack health
insurance.
It is information, of course, that congressional Democrats have cited
time and again in our ongoing effort to convince the Republicans that
the issue of uninsured children is one of the most, if not the most
important issue the 105th Congress should examine. I emphasize the word
should, Mr. Speaker, because to date the Republicans have yet to
incorporate a health insurance program for children into their agenda
for Congress.
Well, among the all too familiar information contained in the
Children's Defense Fund report is the total number of uninsured
children in this country: some 10 million American kids lack health
coverage. Since 1989, the number of children without private health
insurance has risen by an average of 1.2 million per year. I stress
that: 1.2 million per year. Nearly 90 percent of uninsured children
have at least one working parent, and 64 percent have a parent who
works full time, so we are talking about working parents here. Every
day that goes by without congressional action, 3,300 more kids are
added to the ranks of the uninsured, a trend that has been exacerbated
in recent years by the growing number of working parents who do not
qualify for Medicaid but remain unable to afford insurance for their
kids. As I said, these numbers continue to grow.
I have to say, though, that we must be careful not to get too caught
up in the practice of simply reading the numbers. I do that a lot, and
I do not want to just emphasize that. The emphasis has to be placed on
who exactly are the uninsured children, why they are uninsured, and
what are the consequences. Perhaps if we can help our Republican
colleagues understand the consequences, we will have greater success in
convincing them that providing health insurance to children is of the
utmost importance.
I just wanted to talk a little about this CDF report. It does an
excellent job of explaining what really is the issue here. Just a quote
from the report. It says:
The human costs of children's lack of health coverage are
high. Study after study have shown that children and adults
lacking health insurance are more likely to see doctors less
often, even when they are sick, or to go without preventive
care and to emergency rooms when they need treatment.
Seven of 10 uninsured children live in families with
incomes below 200 percent of poverty. Many such families must
choose between paying the full cost of prescriptions and
doctor visits for uninsured children and paying for other
basic family needs like the rent, utility bills or whatever.
Care is sometimes delayed when children are sick, with
parents hoping that no harm results.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about families where one or both parents
work. These hard-working parents, as the CDF report puts it, are
playing by the rules, and more often than not their wishful thinking
does not work.
The report notes, and I just want to mention this quote, because I
think it is really true, that the report notes that ``perhaps less
obvious, quote, perhaps less obvious, but no less damaging are the
educational, social and economic costs to the children who lack health
insurance and to the Nation.''
Children who are unnecessarily ill can miss days, weeks, or even
months of school and their parents can miss significant periods of
work. A child who cannot see the blackboard well and his parents cannot
afford a visit to the eye doctor or eyeglasses cannot learn up to his
or her potential. Uninsured pregnant women without adequate prenatal
care are more likely to deliver babies with dangerously low birth
weights, and the average hospital costs for a low-birth-weight baby are
10 times the cost of prenatal care.
Mr. Speaker, this is the yearbook that the Children's Defense Fund
put out. It is called ``The State of America's Children,'' and I would
suggest that every one of our colleagues take a look at this document.
This afternoon, actually this morning, I had a number of physicians
from my district that were down to visit me from the New Jersey Medical
Society, and some of them were on a cable TV show that I had earlier
this afternoon. I asked about the issue of preventative care, and one
of the physicians was an eye doctor. He specifically pointed out how in
the case of eye disease, prevention and being able to see an eye doctor
and getting help when problems start is so crucial and really prevents
serious eye disorders down the road.
{time} 1830
Also, I would note how very inexpensive it was to deal with
preventative care to make sure children were seeing a doctor, as
opposed to having to go to a hospital or having a very expensive
operation later.
At some point during our special order, I would like to talk about
some of the legislation that my Democratic colleagues have put forward
to try to solve this problem, as well as the proposals that have been
put forward by President Clinton.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon [Ms. Hooley].
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding
to me.
Mr. Speaker, in some of these things I will be repeating the same as
the gentleman from New Jersey, but I think they are worth repeating. It
is alarming, the number of children in this country who do not have any
health care. Again, it is over 10 million children with no health care.
Every minute, every minute, three children lose their health care
coverage. By the year 2000 if nothing changes, as many as 12.6 million
kids will have to depend on an emergency room as opposed to a family
physician.
Let me try to tell the Members what that means for our kids. Most of
the uninsured children are at risk for preventable illnesses. For
example, one in two uninsured children who have asthma do not visit the
doctor during the year. As a consequence, these kids end up in the
hospital with problems that could have been prevented with proper care.
All we need to do is look at the kids that are uninsured who have ear
infections, a very common problem for kids. One in three never see a
doctor, and many end up with permanent hearing loss.
It is situations like these that make me think about the parents who
lay awake each night wondering what they can do when their kids get
sick. There is no instinct as basic as that instinct to protect one's
children and care for one's children.
Today there are too many parents in America who cannot act on that
instinct. The real tragedy of the situation is that these are parents
who play by the rules. Nine out of ten uninsured children have parents
who work. These are not deadbeat parents, these are parents who work,
but their employers do not provide coverage for their employees'
children.
We have Medicaid that helps the very poorest of the children, and we
have families that are well off that can afford insurance, and we have
some people that work for employers who provide that insurance; but we
have millions of parents who work every day, who are trapped in the
middle. They have just enough money to cover their food or their
housing and clothing for their children, and they simply do not have
the money to pay for health insurance. But we can help. I think it is
time that we provide some kind of targeted tax credit that will help
working families provide that health insurance that their kids so
desperately need.
This is not a new government program. We can do it within our current
structure. It is a way to make the current health system work for
working families.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is a very practical, commonsense solution to
a growing problem. It is a problem that every parent caught in the
middle has to deal with, and we need to make sure that these parents
can provide for their children. We cannot afford to do anything
different.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, again I think the Children's Defense Fund
report that both of us are making reference that really explains to us
what the nature of the problem is.
Some people have said to me, why is it that the number of children
who do not have insurance has gone up in recent years, because Congress
has made an effort over the last 10 or 20 years to expand Medicaid,
which of course is the program for those below a certain income, and
many States have actually instituted programs to try to cover those
children who were not eligible for Medicaid on their own. So we had
this effort over the last 10 or 20 years to expand Medicaid on the
Federal level and
[[Page H1006]]
to also have States address the problem.
I think the Children's Defense Fund report explains very well, the
reason why those efforts have not been enough is because during that
same period, the last 10 years or so, we have seen fewer and fewer
employers that provide any health insurance coverage for children, and
also they increasingly charge the employee either the full cost of a
group plan or a significant portion of the cost, which makes it
unaffordable.
We also have the phenomenon now increasingly where an employer will
pay either all or part of the cost to the employee, but not for the
family. That was not the case so much in the past.
Just to give some statistics again from the report, it says that more
workers are on jobs that either provide no health insurance benefits or
require employees to pay unaffordable amounts. In 1993, more than
three-quarters of employees at medium and large companies had to pay
some or all of the cost of family health insurance provided through
their employers. In 1980 the proportion was less than half.
Then it gives some statistics from the Health Insurance Association
of America that says the total cost of family health coverage in 1992
averaged $4,500 to $5,000 a year, but in 1993 employees of medium and
large companies themselves paid an average of $1,300 a year for family
coverages. Employees of small companies were even worse off. They paid
an average of $1,900 a year.
So what we see is moderate-income working families who live from
paycheck to paycheck who simply cannot afford, even if the employer
offers a policy, they cannot afford that coverage. That is why all our
efforts, and of course they were good efforts on the part of Congress
and the State legislature, have helped, but we continue to slide back
because of increasingly the situation with people not getting health
benefits through their employer.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Last weekend I was at home, Mr. Speaker, in
Oregon, and I was at a community health program. I talked to some of
the people there. I think it is helpful to hear some real life stories.
I can give a lot of them, but let me just repeat a couple.
I was talking to one woman who had three children, two smaller ones
and a child that was 9. She had no health care coverage. She was
working. She worked for $6.50 an hour. She was working about 26 hours a
week. Her employer provided no health insurance for either her or her
children. Her husband worked. He had a very low base pay. He worked on
commissions. Some months he made better than others.
In Oregon we have what is called an Oregon Health Plan, but because
you have to be consistently at a certain pay level, some months he made
more so he was not eligible, and then the months that he made less, by
the time he got eligible he was into a month where he made more. But
the fact is, they never had enough money for insurance.
So they have three children, both parents are working, he is working
full-time, she is working more than half-time, neither company provides
insurance for their children. They are living really month to month,
and in this instance, they were able to go to a community health
program where they paid on a sliding scale and got some attention, but
it is very difficult. It is a community health program that has too
many patients, no more room to expand, so they are also restricting the
number of people they can see.
Another person I talked to was a father of four kids, two sets of
twins, and his youngest child got sick, one of the younger twins. He
took that child, he said, all day long from clinic to clinic to clinic,
and he was turned away. He was turned away at the emergency room,
trying to find some place to take his child. Again, no health care.
He was a person that worked hard, worked full-time. He worked three
different jobs, but he traveled, so he worked 3 months or 4 months or 5
months on one job, another 4 or 5 months on another job, and so again
the employer did not cover the cost because he was not there full-time.
But he was not a person that was not working very hard at what he was
doing, but barely able to make ends meet. That is a very common story.
Mr. PALLONE. I think what the gentlewoman described is a very typical
situation. I know in New Jersey I have people come into my office with
very similar types of situations, either because maybe they are not
working full time at the same job, or they have several jobs. It is
just very common.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi],
who has been out front on the issue of health care coverage for a long
time.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on
this and so many other issues of importance to the people of our
country, and for calling this special order. I am pleased to join him
and one of our new Members of Congress, the gentlewoman from Oregon,
and I thank her for her leadership on all of these issues, as well.
Mr. Speaker, I serve on the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education of the Committee on Appropriations. On that
committee we deal with the welfare of America's children in many ways:
their health, their education and well-being, and the economic security
of their families, which is related to their well-being, that is for
sure.
What we see in that committee from the scientists who come in and
tell us what the possibilities are now in science, and what we know
about the development of children's brains, is how important it is for
them to have the proper nutrition and care before they are born even,
and how essential that is, and that investments in their good health
are very good investments for our country indeed.
The opportunities are great. Knowledge that we have gives us plenty
more opportunity to help our children not only reach their own personal
fulfillment, not only strengthen the families from which they come, but
also enrich our own country in terms of our family values and our
economic strength. So we all have a responsibility to these children.
Every parent, of course, has a responsibility to his or her child,
but on our committee we are trained to think of every child in America
as our child, all the children as our children, because indeed they are
our responsibility.
So in Congress, we have a responsibility, as well as State
legislatures have a responsibility, to expand health care coverage to
insure America's nearly 10 million--as has been referenced by my
colleague--uninsured children. These are important efforts.
We also have responsibilities as a society, every segment of the
society has a responsibility to help children receive necessary health
care. Parents should use every opportunity to buy health insurance and
provide for the care of their children. Employers must renew their
willingness to provide workers with family health coverage and other
family supporting benefits. They should stop dropping coverage for
children and pay premiums for family coverage. States should ensure
that all eligible children are enrolled in Medicaid, and should adopt
good child health programs like those adopted in 1966 in New York and
in Massachusetts.
Again, the Federal Government must also help working families obtain
health insurance for their uninsured children. A child's chances of
growing up healthy and strong should not depend on what State he or she
is from. We have a Federal responsibility.
Any initiative on children's health coverage must be effective, not
symbolic or cosmetic, and should include certain basic principles.
I too want to acknowledge the good work of the Children's Defense
Fund for helping to define the problem, to quantify it in statistics,
the challenge we face, and to qualify it in terms of the nature of the
problem we are faced with. I associate myself with the principles they
have advanced that state that uninsured children, at least through age
18, and uninsured pregnant women should receive coverage for all the
full range of necessary services, including care required for children
with special needs.
The proposal should build on successful private, State, and Federal
efforts to help working families afford health insurance for their
children, and while there is a broad consensus that working parents
should help pay for their children's private insurance, the cost must
be affordable, it must be based on family income, and must allow all
families to obtain coverage and seek care for their children.
[[Page H1007]]
While I think it is very important for employers to retain and in
some cases obtain health insurance for their workers, I think that the
sad part of all of this debate about children in America is it is so
obvious that it is such a good investment, that these children will be
stronger in every way if they are invested in in terms of their good
health. But also the fact that we have to talk about a public role I
think speaks to the fact that wages in America have not risen with our
great economic success. In some ways, government is once again being
called upon to subsidize a low wage in America.
Every working parent should either have health insurance with his or
her job, or have the ability to purchase health insurance for their
children. No wonder some people find it a matter of survival to have to
go on welfare in order to receive Medicaid benefits if their children
are sick and they simply have no other recourse. Let us not have
seeking health care be an incentive to go on welfare. That is exactly
the wrong direction. But also let us look to the needs of not only
people on welfare, but to the working poor in America and their health
care needs.
I thank the gentleman once again for his leadership on this.
Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman, and I think
particularly what she said at the end there about how unfair it is, or
the disincentive it creates, that in fact people who are working
oftentimes do not have health insurance for their children, and yet
people who fall below a certain income are on welfare, and end up
having health insurance.
We certainly do not want to encourage people not to work, which is
basically the disincentive that is sometimes built into the system. I
think that is very important. I appreciate her comments in that regard.
{time} 1845
I wanted to also mention, going back to what my colleague from Oregon
said, the situation with regard to self-employed, part-time temporary
workers, independent contractors, parents working for very small
businesses or service sector companies. These are the areas that the
Children's Defense Fund points out where they are very likely to have
parents who work, but they are not having any health coverage for their
children.
What is interesting about it is, if we look at it from a cost point
of view, because we always have to be worried about cost in the
Congress, is that the parents who do not have access to a group policy
through their employer often have to pay $6,000 a year or more,
according to the Children's Defense Fund, if they buy a family health
policy on their own.
Obviously when you talk in those kinds of numbers, it is completely
out of the question for many of these working families. The other
thing, going back to prevention, because I think we continually have to
stress that, the cost that is saved, the amount of money that is saved
through preventative measures, and they give some very good examples
with the Children's Defense Fund report where they talk about
preventative care and say that each dollar invested to immunize a child
saves between $3.40 and $16.34 in direct medical costs. Nine months of
prenatal care costs $1,100, 1 day of neonatal intensive hospital care
for a low-birth-weight baby costs $1,000. On the average, hospital
costs for low-birth-weight babies are 10 times the costs of prenatal
care.
Mr. Speaker, they give an example in Florida where a rural county
provided all children and pregnant women access to outpatient health
care and the rate of premature births dropped by 39 percent. The
percentage of children receiving checkups doubled and emergency room
visits were cut by nearly 50 percent.
We had some discussion in our children's health care task force that
the Democrats have about the costs and estimates basically around $500
per child if we were actually covering every one of the 10 million
children who do not have insurance. So compare that $500 to the cost
that some of these families are paying annually, well, they can't
afford it. But if they could afford it, I mean the bottom line is that,
if you devise a program that takes in most of these children, it can be
a very relatively, a very cheap policy as opposed to the costs of
insuring an adult or senior citizen.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. A lot of these parents, they cannot afford a
full policy. They find it unaffordable. It is not that they are not
willing to pay some money and squeeze out some money out of a very
limited budget for some health insurance. It is the cost. Mr. Speaker,
if we go out and buy individually for a family or what we were talking
about, if they work for a small business, they are a part-time worker,
there is maybe not a policy in their company, and for them to go out
and buy that individually is very expensive. But these are, if it were
a little more affordable, these are people willing to help and pitch in
to pay for part of it. They just cannot afford the whole coverage.
It reminds me when we talk about the cost and about prevention, I do
not know if we remember the old television ad: You can pay me now or
pay me later. It is one of those, if we do not take care of them now,
we really do pay so much more later on.
Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. That is true.
Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to mention briefly that obviously there
are various proposals that Democrats have put forward about how to deal
with this problem. The President has a proposal, some of our leaders in
the House of Representatives have proposals. I just thought I would
mention a few of them. We do not, not necessarily saying which ones are
better than others. One of the things is to just mandate that insurance
companies provide a kids-only policy because there are a lot of parents
who cannot afford, for example, or may decide that they do not want to
cover themselves but still want to cover the children.
My understanding is it is very difficult to buy that kind of policy.
So you could actually say that any insurance company that does business
with the Federal Government, for example, has to provide a kids-only
insurance policy.
The other options that have been put forward, one is H.R. 560 by the
gentleman from California [Mr. Stark] that establishes a new Medicare-
like entitlement program for children under age 18, so we could expand
Medicare. We could expand Medicaid to bring in some of the children.
The other one, another one, H.R. 561, by Representative STARK again,
authorizes a refundable tax credit for 95 percent of the costs of
children's health insurance. So again, we could use tax credits as a
way of trying to provide coverage.
I wanted to also mention Senator Daschle has S. 13, which establishes
a Federal program of subsidies for children and families with income
under 75,000. So we could basically subsidize care, based on sort of a
sliding scale, based on what a person can afford. And of course the one
that, the proposal that has probably had the most coverage in the media
was what President Clinton proposed in his budget. Basically he has a
number of provisions to expand health insurance. He has a State
administered program of temporary health insurance premium assistance
for unemployed workers and their families. He has a Federal grant
program to encourage the development of voluntary health insurance
purchasing cooperatives, and then he has grants to States who expand
children's health insurance.
Mr. Speaker, I just mention these because there really are a variety
of ways to accomplish this. Frankly, it is not that costly. The more
children you include, the less the cost actually becomes per child.
I think that I want to leave everybody with this tonight, and of
course we have been saying this over and over on the floor the last
couple of weeks or the last couple of months now, is that as Democrats
we feel very strongly that this issue needs to come to the House floor.
We would like the Republican leadership to give us a date certain and
say as of such and such a date, I think the President throughout the
date of July 4, that as of such-and-such a date, a children's health
insurance proposal or some combination thereof will come to the House
floor. We will have an opportunity to consider it and to vote on it.
What was really bothering me is that in discussing their priorities,
the GOP basically has not included this issue. And I think that is
wrong because it is
[[Page H1008]]
an issue that must be addressed. That is why we are going to be here
almost every day or at least several times a week talking about the
nature of the problem.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Again, all I want is a chance for it to be
brought up so we can look at all of the different ways. I think we can
do it within the current system, but I would like to see it brought up
so we can have that debate on how do we solve this problem, how do we
cover our kids with health insurance, a critical issue, one facing an
incredible number of families. Just think about it, three kids every
single minute. We have been talking I do not know how many minutes, but
three kids each of those minutes we have been talking loses their
health insurance. It is an issue we just have to face.
Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Serrano],
who has been on the floor several times in the last month or so talking
about this issue.
Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank once again the
gentleman from New Jersey for bringing us together, as you have on
different occasions, to discuss this subject.
I was back in my office at the beginning of this hour listening to
the comments of both of you as well as other Members. It dawns on me
that one of the things we see in this House quite a bit of and
throughout the Nation recently is in the last few years people
celebrating the fact that the cold war is over and that we have played
a major role in bringing that about and that we were very influential
in changing the way different countries behaved.
I think we have to celebrate that. I think it is good. It is a good
sign about who we are as a people and a nation.
But I think that when we do that, we also have a responsibility and
that is to every so often look inward and take a look to see what we
are accomplishing right here at home.
When you look at the figures, for instance, in my city of New York,
where 25 percent of all the residents under 65 are not covered by
health insurance and where 20 percent of all children under 18 are not
covered by health insurance, we know that this is a very serious
problem. But what is interesting about it, both of you brought this up,
is that 22 percent of those who are insured work for corporations, for
companies that have more than 1,000 employees. That is an alarming
statistic.
We thought that if you were working, one, two, working for a large
outfit, everything would be fine. Here we have the wealthiest city in
the world in the wealthiest Nation on Earth with 25 percent of its
population not insured.
Then there is a contradiction in that we say, if you are very poor,
as so many are in my south Bronx district, we will cut you here and
there, but we will try to find a way to take care of you. But what you
have to do is get yourself out of the condition and move forward. And
when some people do by their bootstraps and in some cases with past
government help move out of that condition, they find themselves then
not having the availability of health insurance for themselves and for
their children.
How are we judged throughout the world? How do we judge ourselves?
Well, some of us would say that because we have a great army, which is
always ready, that we are a great nation, and that because we have
accomplished so much in technology and other fields, we are a great
nation. And we are and those are good signs of what we have done.
But I think that there is taking a bite out of our existence and our
future as a great nation and our present as a great nation the fact
that so many of our children are uninsured. And I do not understand why
anyone in charge of this House would say, we are not going to include
that as an issue for discussion.
I represent a district that has many titles. It is one of the more
compact districts in the Nation. You can walk my district from one side
to the other in 30 minutes. That is good for me. It is also bad because
my opponent can walk it in 30 minutes also. It is one of the youngest
districts in the Nation. It is at times one of the poorest districts in
the Nation.
And I have had friends of mine come to visit the district, and the
first thing they say to me is, there are so many children: children who
are going to school, children who are living in the neighborhood,
children who are looking towards the future. The majority of those
children have parents who are working, and yet the reason we are here
tonight and the reason we have been here before and the reason we will
continue to be here is because there is something terribly wrong at
this moment in our country when we have allowed the situation to get
out of hand to the point where if you did not know that you were
watching Members of the U.S. Congress, you would think that you were
watching members of another parliament or another government discussing
conditions in their country. These are American children, and we are
the country that claims that we have solved so many problems.
I would make the same request that I made when I joined the gentleman
from New Jersey before, and that is, if you are a parent, if you are a
guardian of a child who is not going through this condition, as you
help that child with his or her homework tonight, as you put that child
to sleep, as you cuddle and tuck that child in bed and pray with him
and feel good about the fact that you have got a good family which is
doing well, maybe perhaps you will just take another 15 minutes and
write to a Member of Congress and say, I put my child to sleep. My
child has health care. My child is OK. I may complain about other
things in this society and what Government is doing, but this is OK. I
do not have a problem with you if you deal with this issue so that
other children can have what my child has and that other parents can
feel as good as I feel about my child's safety.
I think what we need to do is to begin to have people who are in a
better situation than others to defend the need for those folks to have
something a little better than what they have now.
I think that eventually we will be measured amongst many things in
terms of how we treat our children. If we have to continuously get up
to bring up this subject and it does not get solved, then that will be
our failure. So I would hope that we come together, that we continue to
do this. And once again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to
join you tonight and to continue to ask you to continue this fight. You
have been the leader on it for such a long time. Do not give it up. It
is the right thing, and we will stand by you together as we do this.
Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman. And I particularly appreciate
what he says about getting our constituents to reach out and other
constituents to reach out to their Members of Congress to make them
aware of the fact that this is a crisis and that it needs to be
addressed.
I do not like to give out what I would consider unfavorable
statistics about our country, because I am so proud of our country, but
you mentioned about our situation here in America versus other
countries. If you look at, again, this is from the Children's Defense
Fund, this report we have been talking about this evening, they point
out that in every industrialized country children get better health
coverage than in the United States. Every other industrialized country
provides health coverage to all its people.
America, of course, does not even cover all its children. The United
States ranks 18th in overall infant mortality. Only Portugal does
worse. And if the United States matched Japan's infant mortality rate,
more than 15,000 American babies who died before their first birthday
in 1994 would be alive today.
{time} 1900
The United States ranks 18th in the percentage of babies born at
dangerously low weight. No industrialized country does worse. Again, it
is not because we want to point out bad things about our country, but
it is really shocking and it is really shameful that in the greatest
country and the wealthiest country in the world that we have to point
out those statistics with regard to infant mortality and health care.
Mr. SERRANO. If the gentleman will yield, I think he makes an
interesting and a very important point. This is not about knocking
ourselves, about turning our backs on our country. This is not about an
unpatriotic act.
This is about the fact that the strength of the country is in the
future
[[Page H1009]]
of its children, and if at the present we cannot provide them with
health care, not to mention other harm we may bring to them, if we
cannot provide them with basic health care, if we cannot allow a parent
to feel the safety of knowing that that child will get sick and will be
covered by health insurance in a country where you have to pay for
medical care, if we cannot do that and if we keep quiet about it, then
we are not honoring our country, I think. We are just dishonoring the
country.
We have to speak up and say this is a problem. But we are not saying,
``This is a problem, fix it.'' We are saying, ``This is a problem. You
as a majority party bring the issue to the table and give us the
opportunity to participate with you in finding solutions.''
Again, and I will close with this, as I said before, we have
solutions. We have covered X amount of people. If we were inventing a
health care system in this country, that would be a problem. If no one
was covered and we had to start from scratch to cover people, that
would be a problem. But most Americans are covered by a health plan. So
what we have to do is make sure that others are covered. We do not have
to reinvent the wheel.
This should not be so difficult if the willingness is there, if the
desire is there, if we begin to accept the fact that there are people
in this society in certain conditions not because they chose those
conditions or brought them on themselves, if we get out of that
mentality and say, ``Yes, I am my brother's keeper. If there is a 9-
month-old baby who is not covered, that is my problem, too. If there is
someone uncovered somewhere else, that is my problem, too.''
If we get into that mentality, then I believe we can deal with this
issue. We do not have to reinvent the wheel or set up a new plan, just
deal with what we have in this country, just make sure it is fair and
expanded to all.
Mr. PALLONE. I agree completely. Again, I want to thank not only the
gentleman but also the gentlewoman from Oregon because she continues to
point out, I think a major point here, we are talking about working
people who are willing to pay either all or some of the cost of the
health insurance for their children. But unless we establish some
system, as the gentleman from New York said, to build on the existing
plans that are out there, they just do not have access to it, or it is
too costly for them because they do not get it through a group plan,
through their employer or whatever. We are talking about working
people.
We are going to continue to do this over the next few weeks and the
next few months, I hope not the next few months because I hope our
colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle will be willing to bring
this up at some point in the next few months. But we have to keep
talking about it because it really is a crisis, as the Children's
Defense Fund report points out.
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