[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 29, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7813-S7815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             SENATE AGENDA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there has been a breakthrough which 
observers in the galleries and others watching might not be aware of; 
that is, after 2 weeks of effort on the floor, we now have an 
understanding that after the Fourth of July recess when we return, we 
are going to debate the Patients' Bill of Rights.
  That is the bill that talks about reforming health insurance in 
America so that families have a better chance of getting quality health 
care so that when you visit a doctor, and the doctor makes a medical 
decision for you or someone you love, it will be less likely that some 
bureaucrat and insurance company will overrule the doctor.
  We want to make certain, as well, that if you have a picnic in the 
backyard on the Fourth of July, and your little boy climbs up the apple 
tree and falls out and breaks his arm, you can take him to the closest 
emergency room without fumbling through your papers to figure out which 
hospital is under your health insurance plan. That is just basic common 
sense.

[[Page S7814]]

  We want to make sure that if a doctor decides that a specialist is 
needed for your problem that the health insurance company just can't 
overrule them; that you go ahead and get that specialist and get the 
best care that doctor recommends.
  If a woman would like to keep an OB/GYN as her primary care 
physician, we don't let the insurance company come in and second-guess 
her on those sorts of things.
  Fundamentally, this bill will also argue that health insurance 
companies, just like every other company in America, should be held 
responsible for their decisions.
  Each of us is responsible for our decisions in life. If you proceed 
to drink too much and drive and something terrible happens, you could 
be held accountable in court.
  The same thing is true for businesses that make bad decisions or good 
decisions. They can be held accountable in court.
  There are only two groups that are above the law: Foreign diplomats 
who can't be brought into court in America, and health insurance 
companies--companies that make decisions every day that are literally 
life and death decisions.
  We believe with the Democratic version of the Patients' Bill of 
Rights that these health insurance companies should entertain the 
possibility that if they make the wrong decision they will be held 
accountable.
  I told this story on the floor before. I think it is one that 
illustrates exactly what is happening.
  Sunday night, I was back in my home State of Illinois and met a 
cardiologist from Highland Park, IL, who a week before had a woman come 
into his office complaining of chest pains. This was on a Thursday. He 
said: I want you in the hospital tomorrow morning, Friday morning, for 
a catheterization to determine what problem you might have.
  She checked with her health insurance company, and they said, no, she 
cannot go in for that catheterization because that isn't an approved 
hospital. We have to find a hospital that is approved under your health 
insurance plan. We will check over the weekend and call you back.
  There was no need to call back. She passed away on Sunday over that 
weekend. And the doctor said to me: What am I supposed to tell that 
family? This woman came to me for the best advice. I had an appointment 
made in a hurry for what I considered to be a serious situation, and it 
was overruled by an insurance company clerk.

  That sort of thing happens too often. We believe in the Patients' 
Bill of Rights to be offered on the Democratic side, and that the 
patients and families across America deserve better treatment.
  The bottom line, of course, is that you are never more vulnerable in 
your life than when you are sick and go to a doctor, or someone you 
dearly love is sick and you bring them to a doctor. You really want the 
best care, and you don't want a decision made on the bottom line of a 
profit statement of an insurance company to guide decisions. You want 
the decisions made by the professionals involved.
  We spent the last 2 weeks kind of twisted in knots not moving forward 
very quickly on a lot of other matters because we couldn't agree 
between the Republican side and the Democratic side on how we might 
approach this issue. There has been a breakthrough today. I am happy 
that it has happened. Now we have an agreement that the week following 
the Fourth of July recess, we will come back and devote the entire week 
to this debate.
  I think of all the things that we have talked about in the 106th 
Congress--and some of them are very important--there is hardly an issue 
more important than the peace of mind which American families want when 
it comes to medical care. They want to have affordable, accessible 
health insurance. They want to be able to speak to a doctor in terms 
where they are confident that the real focus of the attention is on the 
health of the member of the family and not the health of the profit and 
loss statement of the insurance company. That, unfortunately, has 
become the case.
  It wasn't that many years ago in Washington that we had this big 
debate. President Clinton brought in health care reform. I am sure you 
remember it. It was a hotly debated issue. The insurance companies 
opposed it. There were a lot of efforts to derail it. And they were 
successful. That health insurance-health care reform was swept aside.
  But most Americans would believe that we did something because of all 
the changes that took place within the last few years. There are more 
and more Americans under so-called managed care plans and fewer and 
fewer Americans with health insurance. Fewer employers are offering it. 
People in rural areas whom I represent in Illinois are finding it 
increasingly difficult to even find, let alone afford, health 
insurance.
  All of these things have been happening over the last several years 
in a swirl of activities.
  They tell me that last night Jay Leno, on his television show, talked 
about the fact that Stephen King, after this unfortunate accident and 
the experience he had in the hospital, was going to write his next 
horror novel about managed care insurance companies. I hope that is not 
the case. But it might be. It drew a rise from the audience, as I am 
sure it would almost everywhere.
  You may remember the movie, ``As Good as it Gets,'' with Helen Hunt 
and Jack Nicholson. I enjoyed it a lot. At one point in the movie--she 
was raising an asthmatic son--she expressed her frustration in very 
dramatic words about dealing with health insurance companies. And in 
the movie theater in which I was sitting in Springfield, IL, people 
started applauding. That doesn't happen much.
  But that kind of spontaneous reaction tells you that the people of 
this country have been waiting for Congress to catch up with the needs 
of American families.
  I think we can do it. I think this debate this week that we have set 
aside, if it doesn't get bogged down in a lot of parliamentary 
hassles--and I don't think it will--could result in an honest debate 
where the Republican Party puts forward its best proposal for health 
insurance reform, and the Democrats do the same, and we vote on it.
  When it is all said and done, perhaps we will then have a bill that 
really sets us on a track to help families across America get a break 
when they deal with these health insurance companies.
  Last Saturday I met with a group of farmers in downstate Illinois. I 
heard an interesting story from one farmer about the problems his wife 
faced because of her medical condition. These farmers in many ways are 
the most vulnerable of all. They don't have the benefit of group health 
insurance, in most instances, nor can they bargain with insurance 
companies. They find themselves, many times, facing outrageous premiums 
and arbitrary decisions by the insurance companies.
  This farmer had driven about 100 miles to the meeting because he 
wanted to tell his story about what he and his wife had been through 
with the health insurance companies. These stories, repeated over and 
over and over again, suggest to me that it is our responsibility to 
deal with this.
  I hope when this Congress comes to an end, at least this year we can 
point back to the fact that we were sensitive to the issues that 
America cared about. There was a time, for example, on the Senate floor 
when there was a serious question as to whether we would do anything--
anything--about the horrible shooting that occurred at Columbine High 
School in Littleton, CO. Fortunately, a debate was scheduled on the 
floor. After a week of debate, we passed a gun control bill--a modest 
bill, I might say, but one that was designed to keep guns out of the 
hands of kids and criminals.
  We sent it to the House of Representatives. Sadly, the National Rifle 
Association, the gun lobby, used the 2 weeks before it came up for a 
vote to lobby away, and they were very effective. They watered down the 
bill until it was a joke. The bill ultimately was even defeated in the 
House of Representatives.
  I haven't given up on that issue, because I think most people across 
the country--gun owners and not--believe we can do things to keep guns 
out of the hands of people who shouldn't use them for a variety of 
reasons. The bill we passed was a very modest bill,

[[Page S7815]]

which said, for example, that those who purchased guns at gun shows 
would be subject to a background check. I don't think that is an 
outrageous idea.
  We passed the Brady law. We said, if you want to buy a gun, we want 
to know if you have a history of committing a crime, a violent crime, 
because if you do, we are not going to sell you a gun; or if you have a 
history of violent illness, mental illness, we won't sell you a gun. 
That has worked. It has kept guns out of the hands of hundreds of 
thousands of people. At least it slowed them down, at a minimum, but 
maybe it stopped them from owning a gun.
  It turns out that a substantial portion of firearms are sold outside 
the law. They are sold at gun shows. We have them all over Illinois, 
all over the United States. People who own guns and collect them get 
together and sell them to one another, no questions asked. Because no 
questions are asked, it has become a supply operation for a lot of 
criminal elements.
  In Illinois, the State police found that 25 percent of the guns used 
in crime came out of those gun shows. One of the things we put into law 
in the Senate was that there would be a background check, similar to 
the Brady law, to find out if a person purchasing at a gun show had, in 
fact, a criminal background or a history of mental illness.
  The National Rifle Association doesn't like that. When they got the 
bill over in the House, they said, you can't take more than 24 hours to 
do the check. The gun shows occur on weekends, of course, and the 
wheels that are spinning forward to check the backgrounds of people may 
not be as available on weekends. As a consequence, they watered down 
the bill until it was meaningless.

  A second provision we put into law--Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin 
was the author--suggested we not sell guns in America unless they had a 
trigger lock, a child safety device. Thirteen kids every day in America 
are killed by guns. Some are gangbangers who shoot away in Washington, 
DC, in Chicago, IL. Others, though, are kids who go out and get a gun 
off a shelf from their father's closet, start to play with it, 
discharge it, and shoot themselves, a brother, sister, or playmate. 
Thirteen kids a day die that way.
  We want to lessen the likelihood of those tragic accidents. Trigger 
locks, safety devices on guns, do that. That was in our bill. That was 
sent to the House. That was rejected.
  The final point is one that Senator Dianne Feinstein of California 
proposed, a proposal that tries to close a loophole in the law. When we 
passed gun control a few years ago, we said, we are going to prohibit 
the manufacture of these high-capacity ammunition clips, clips that can 
literally hold up to 240 bullets. Unfortunately, we left a loophole and 
didn't stop the importation of these clips from overseas. So we stopped 
the domestic manufacturing, and they started flooding in from overseas.
  Frankly, it raises a serious question: Who needs a gun with a 240-
bullet high-capacity ammunition clip? If you need an AK-47 and 240 
bullets to shoot a deer, you ought to stick to fishing.
  Unfortunately, they are coming into this country for no purpose other 
than to be used for criminal purposes.
  Senator Feinstein was successful. She passed that amendment in the 
Senate. We sent it to the House. It got nowhere.
  Those are the kinds of things we did to try to deal with some of the 
problems we have identified. Having done those things, and having seen 
the National Rifle Association do its work in the House, we have a lot 
more work to be done.
  I hope when the debate is concluded at the end of this 106th 
Congress, we can point with pride to having succeeded in passing import 
elements in law that improve the quality of life in America, that 
reduce the likelihood of violence in schools, that reduce the 
likelihood of guns getting in the hands of criminals, that increase the 
opportunities for families across America to have good health insurance 
and be able to trust their doctor's decisions, and several other things 
that I think are very important as part of the agenda.
  One of them has to deal with increasing the minimum wage of $5.15 an 
hour. Imagine, if you will, trying to raise a family or even take care 
of yourself for $5.15 an hour. It has been years since we have 
increased it. It is time we bring that up to a wage that more 
accurately reflects the cost of living in America. I hope before we 
leave this year we can address that.
  We cannot leave, as well, without addressing the future of Medicare. 
This has been a banner week for Medicare with the President's 
announcement that we now have a reestimate of the budget. We believe if 
the economy continues to grow, as we believe it will, we are going to 
have an additional surplus. With that surplus we can do some 
extraordinary things.
  I first came to Congress 17 years ago. When I came, we were facing 
all sorts of red ink and all sorts of deficits. We have been through a 
lot of tortuous effort to try to reduce. Now we have reached the point 
where we can honestly see a surplus in our future. I think we can use 
that surplus to solidify Social Security and Medicare and, most 
importantly, while we do that, eliminate the publicly held national 
debt in America. To move from the point where a large portion of our 
budget is being spent on interest on the debt to the point where 
virtually none is being spent on interest on our debt is a great legacy 
to leave our children. I hope we can achieve that on a bipartisan 
basis.
  I yield the floor.

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