[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 75 (Wednesday, June 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3437-H3438]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey Mr. Pallone is 
recognized for half the remaining time until midnight as the designee 
of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, Democrats have been active in trying to 
provide health care coverage for uninsured children, and since the last 
Congress Democrats developed the Families First Agenda that basically 
puts families first and insists that there be, as

[[Page H3438]]

part of our legislative agenda in this Congress, a kids' health care 
initiative.
  The initiative that we have put forward was basically developed by 
the Democratic Health Care Task Force, which I happen to one of the co-
chairs. I wanted to mention, Mr. Speaker, that our task force has held 
numerous meetings and hearings on the issue of kids' health insurance. 
Testimony has been submitted from child advocacy groups, health care 
providers and actual families.
  In addition, discussions have been held with the Health Care 
Financing Administration, representatives from the insurance industry 
and some of our Nation's Governors. Democrats have been dedicated, 
basically, and shown a commitment to developing a workable plan that 
will first build upon the foundation of Medicaid; second, provide 
States with additional resources to meet the health care needs of 
children in working families; and, third, enact private insurance 
reforms to make it easier for families to purchase children only 
policies.

  I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that if it were not for Democrats leading 
the charge on children's health care, it probably would not have been 
included in the budget resolution that we will be considering tomorrow 
in conference.
  In 1996, dozens of my Democratic colleagues joined me in writing a 
letter to the President, to Secretary Rubin and to Secretary Shalala 
urging inclusion of funds to provide assistance for the Nation's 10 
million uninsured children. As the Speaker knows, the President's 
initial fiscal year 1998 budget did include monies for children's 
health care.
  I want to commend the President, because President Clinton basically 
held his ground and insisted on including monies for children's health 
care in the balanced budget agreement that will be coming back from the 
conference tomorrow. What I am hoping is that the Democratic 
initiative, the Health Care Task Force initiative, will be included as 
part of this budget resolution. It will be ready for reconciliation, 
which we will of course begin to consider next week.
  Without getting into the details of the Democratic caucuses plan, 
though, right now, I would like to yield some time to one of my 
colleagues on the Committee on Commerce, who has been very active in 
the kids' health insurance issue, the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. 
Strickland.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding 
me this time. It is disturbing to me that in a country which is making 
progress on many fronts, where the economy is doing well for most 
Americans, where the deficit is shrinking, that we continue to have a 
health care crisis in this country. Some 40 million Americans are 
without health insurance, and the sad, tragic fact is that over 10 
million of that number is composed of America's children.
  We are a country that claims to value our children. We use children 
in commercials to sell products, everything from toilet paper to new 
houses. We talk about how much we value children and that we are a 
child centered society. But I believe that a country's values are best 
reflected, most accurately reflected in the behaviors and the public 
policies that it pursues rather than in the words that its leaders 
speak.
  Ten million children without health insurance. And who are these 
kids? Some think that they are only composed of children whose parents 
are not working or who are on welfare, but of course that is absolutely 
not the case.
  Currently, children whose parents receive welfare benefits, and are 
qualified to do so, the parents of those children do have access to 
quality health care through the Medicaid program. But many of the 
children, in fact most of the children that are without health care 
coverage in this country today, are the children whose mothers and 
fathers work.
  They work full time, most of them. Most of them are from two-parent 
homes, and yet their parents work for employers that, for sometimes 
good reasons, other times for not good reasons, do not have health care 
benefits as a part of the employment package of benefits. And yet their 
wages are so low that they could not possibly go on the open market and 
purchase health insurance for their children. So these kids do without. 
They do without timely and appropriate dental care. Many of them do 
without those kinds of annual examinations which every pediatrician 
recommends in order to identify problems early so that they can be 
promptly treated and remediated.
  So today, in this country, a rich country, a country that boasts of a 
booming economy, low unemployment, a shrinking deficit, at a time when 
we are talking about having a balanced budget, there are many 
Americans, and many in this Congress, I am sad to say, who seem to be 
unconcerned about 10 million American kids.
  I am happy that the President is proposing in this budget agreement 
that we extend benefits to at least five additional million, but it 
troubles me, it really troubles me that we are not talking in terms of 
all of our children and making a commitment to using our national 
resources as they ought to be used to make sure as a priority that 
America's children, regardless of their economic situation, regardless 
of what families they come from, that those children have access to 
quality, timely, appropriate health care.
  So as we look forward to the next weeks and months in this chamber, 
it is my hope that the American people will begin to express 
themselves, and that conservatives and liberals alike will say that 10 
million American children without health insurance is unacceptable and 
we will not tolerate it for a longer time.

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