[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 91 (Thursday, June 24, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7565-S7566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PATIENTS' BILL OF RIGHTS

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I think it is appropriate to respond to 
some of the commentary from the other side about the Patients' Bill of 
Rights--the Republican plan versus the Kennedy bill, the proposal that 
the other side has put forth.
  The American public should know and recognize that a majority in this 
Congress is for moving on an effective proposal and for addressing the 
needs of the American citizens relative to dealing with HMOs, and that 
is the Republican Patients' Bill of Rights. It is a very good package 
of ideas put together after a long and serious amount of consideration. 
It came out of the committee of jurisdiction with a majority vote, is 
now on the floor, and has received a majority vote in the Senate. It 
would significantly improve the situation of patients as they deal with 
doctors and HMOs across this country.
  I think, however, that it also ought to be noted on the other side of 
the coin that what Senator Kennedy's proposal does is to continue the 
Clinton health care plan that we saw about 5 years ago--I guess it was 
5 years ago now--``Hillary-Care,'' as it came to be known. This is sort 
of the daughter of ``Hillary-Care'' or son of ``Hillary-Care,'' as put 
forth by the Senator from Massachusetts. Essentially, if you are going 
to be honest about the practical effect of the proposal of the Senator 
from Massachusetts, it is to increase the premiums for private health 
insurance in this country by at least 4 percent potentially; other 
estimates have been as high as 6 percent.
  When you start raising the premiums for health insurance--especially 
on self-insured individuals--the impact of that is that people drop out 
of the health care insurance system. Why is that? Because they can't 
afford it. If you are a small business of five or six employees, if you 
are running a restaurant, or if you are running an auto shop or a small 
software company, and your costs go up 4 percent on your health care 
premium, that can amount to a significant cost increase, and in many 
instances that is going to be the difference between making it and not 
making it in some of these small companies. So you have a situation 
where people drop the insurance.
  The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the practical 
effect of the Kennedy health care plan will be that well over 1 million 
people will drop their health insurance. Why is this important? Why 
does this tie into ``Hillary-Care''? Because, if you will recall, back 
in the days when we were debating the issues of ``Hillary-Care,'' the 
basic proposal was to create a nationalized system where the Federal 
Government would come in and take over all insurance carriers in this 
country, for all intents and purposes, with the logic behind that being 
that there were too many uninsured people in the health market to date, 
too many Americans simply did not have health care insurance, and 
therefore we needed to have ``Hillary-Care.''
  Nationalization of the health care industry was proposed at that 
time, and the Kennedy bill was introduced by Senator Kennedy on behalf 
the First Lady, and the proposal was, let's nationalize the system so 
all the uninsured in this country will have a system of insurance.
  Of course, it failed miserably, because it was incredibly complex, it 
was incredibly bureaucratic, and it was extraordinarily expensive for 
the American taxpayer. The cost increase and the tax burden for the 
American taxpayer would have far exceeded any savings in premium that 
would have occurred, and the cost in bureaucracy and the loss of 
effectiveness in the administration of health care in this country 
would have had a major impact on the quality of health care.
  So out of common sense, good sense, and good politics, the program 
was rejected out of hand, and in fact it never came to a vote in the 
Senate because, quite honestly, a majority on the other side of the 
aisle was embarrassed by the proposal and they decided to walk away 
from it.
  What we have here is essentially is an extension of that, because 
what we have is a back-door proposal to health care. Unhappy with the 
fact that they were unable to nationalize the health care system, in 
order to cover those folks who do not have enough health insurance, 
they have now decided, by bits and pieces, through small slices--this 
one is a very large slice but through smaller slices of the pie--
to slowly uninsure Americans. So there is such a large pool of 
uninsured Americans that we will have to come back to a ``Hillary-
Care'' system so there will be justification for nationalization of the 
health insurance industry, because there will be all these uninsured 
people out there who have been created and, because of a lack of 
insurance, we will have to create legislation.

  Because of all of these different actions taken--proposals such as we 
are seeing today on ``Kennedy-Care,'' which will create another 1 
million-plus people who are uninsured--next year we will have another 
proposal which will create another group of uninsured and there will be 
another proposal to increase the cost of insurance. And they will add 
something else to private insurance costs--some new benefit, or 
initiative--that will have all sorts of trappings of nice political 
sounds so that they will need to raise the cost of insurance premiums. 
So more people will step off of insurance, and more and more people 
will end up being uninsured over a period of time, and we will end up 
with just more people becoming uninsured as we continue

[[Page S7566]]

down the road of adopting these initiatives which are put forward by 
the Senator from Massachusetts.
  I will tell you, I think the basic game plan here is to create such a 
pool of uninsured people in this country that we have to turn the 
corner and come all the way back so that the Senator from Massachusetts 
and the First Lady can come to us again and say, now, we really need to 
nationalize the health care system because we have all of these 
uninsured people.
  I think there is a bit of a cynical game plan behind the Democratic 
proposal, the Kennedy plan. Maybe I am being too suspicious, but, as a 
practical matter, I think I am being accurate and I am observing what 
the factual events will be.
  The fact is that because of the premium costs that will increase, 
which are going to be driven by ``Kennedy-Care,'' as proposed by this 
bill, we will end up with more people uninsured, and the more people 
that become uninsured in this country, the greater the demand from the 
other side of the aisle will be for a nationalized system of health 
care.
  I will tell you, if a nationalized system of health care was a bad 
idea 5 years ago, it would be a bad idea today, and it will be an idea 
5 years from now when we hear from the other side of the aisle how 
important it is because so many people had to drop off the health care 
system, because they increased the premiums on the health care system 
by passing their proposed Kennedy health care bill.
  I just wanted to make some of those comments in response to some of 
the comments from the other side.
  I think it is ironic that we are holding up agriculture 
appropriations over the issue of the Patients' Bill of Rights. I have 
never been a great fan of the way we fund agriculture in this country, 
as the Senator in the Chair knows. We have been discussing this issue 
for a number of years both in the House and in the Senate. I recognize 
that the farmers in this country are a critical part of our economy and 
that this agricultural appropriations bill is the reasonable, 
responsible way of addressing those farmers' needs.
  We have heard about the crisis in the farm community from the other 
side of the aisle ad nauseam now for 3 months, and suddenly we are 
about to pass the agriculture appropriations bill, and on the other 
side of the aisle Senators from farm States come forward and say, no, 
we can't do the agriculture appropriations bill.

  As someone who is not from a farm-community State--I have a few 
farmers, but they are not the dominant culture in New Hampshire. We 
wish they were. They are certainly wonderful, hard-working people. But 
as somebody who is not from a farm-culture State, I have to scratch my 
head and say, is the crisis real? If these folks on the other side of 
the aisle, who for months have been telling us about the severe crisis 
in farm country, come forward when we are about to do the agriculture 
appropriations bill and delay it for weeks and weeks, and potentially 
even months, I ask, is the crisis real in farm country? Should I, when 
we get another supplemental appropriations bill which has another few 
billion dollars for the farm crisis, take that seriously, or are we 
being ``gamed"?
  I think they put into serious jeopardy the reasonable arguments that 
have been put forward from our side of the aisle by the Senator from 
Kansas and the Senator from Montana, who understand the farm issue and 
who make good arguments on behalf of the farm issue. Those folks who 
are credible on the farm issue on our side of the aisle are having 
their credibility undercut by this type of action from the other side 
of the aisle, which really plays games with the farm crisis and really 
dilutes the arguments on the farm crisis when they are willing to delay 
the funding of the farm bill for what is clearly a political initiative 
undertaken for the purposes of trying to generate a higher polling rate 
than some poll taken in some political election.
  To me, there is a fair amount of cynicism in this Senate today, and 
most of it is being promoted by the actions brought forward by Members 
on the other side of the aisle.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, there is strong bipartisan support to 
address the problem of unequal quorum call time charges. We simply 
cannot let this injustice go on. Let us take action. So to rectify this 
situation, I now suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous 
consent that the time be charged equally.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). Without objection, it is so 
ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative assistant proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, may I inquire about the state of 
business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may speak for 25 minutes. We are 
still in morning business.

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