[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 139 (Sunday, October 29, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H11512-H11513]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 A CONTINUATION OF HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak to an issue raised by the 
gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), my friend, regarding the 
concern that I think we all have regarding our rural hospitals.
  The main reason that I object to the bill that was passed on this 
floor that the President has said he will veto is just the issue the 
gentleman raised, and that is, it is inadequate in terms of its funding 
for our rural hospitals and dedicates too much of the money set aside 
to increase funding for Medicare to the insurance company HMOs.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a letter here from a hospital administrator in my 
district, George Miller. He is the administrator of the Christus Jasper 
Memorial Hospital. He writes to me and he says we are extremely 
concerned because as the present language reads in the bill, the one we 
passed, one-third to one-half of BBA relief over 10 years would go to 
HMOs, leaving less for providers and beneficiaries in east Texas, such 
as the Christus Jasper Memorial Hospital. Further, the bill does not 
prohibit HMOs from dropping benefits or leaving the community as they 
have done here in Texas and left many of our patients without HMO 
coverage. We need your help, Administrator George Miller, Jasper, 
Texas.
  That is the concern that I have about the bill that was passed, and 
that is why I support the President's threatened veto of the bill. The 
truth of the matter is, HMOs are abandoning our seniors. I only have 
four counties out of the 19 that I represent that even have an HMO plan 
offered to them after December 31 of this year.
  I clearly, in representing my constituents, want to see more of that 
increase that we have provided in this bill applied to the rural 
hospitals, the health care providers, rather than giving 40 percent of 
that new money to those HMOs.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, me say, number one, that I appreciate the 
gentleman's sincerity on this issue. However, in terms of the 
President, I have not seen any alternatives. And as the gentleman 
knows, this bill was endorsed by the American Hospital Association, the 
American Cancer Society, the American Federation of Home Health Care 
Providers, the National Association of Children's Hospitals, the 
National Association of Rural Health Clinics, Juvenile Diabetes 
Foundation, the National Association of Community Health Clinics.
  I hope that the President, rather than to veto it, putting politics 
in front of people, I hope he will say, okay, here is how we can 
constructively make changes and fine tune this thing. I think if it was 
up to the handful of us tonight, we could work out the differences real 
quick. And I, too, represent a rural area; and we can have genuine 
disagreements on it, but I do question some of the motives down on 1600 
Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, it is always easy to question motives, and I 
really think that what we have to do is try to form our own views on 
these issues. I am sharing with my colleagues mine, and that is too 
much of the increase in Medicare money in this bill goes to the 
insurance company HMOs, and there are only four counties in my district 
that even offer an HMO Medicare choice plan.
  I am not sure how long they are going to be there. I would invite my 
colleagues to take a look at the report just issued by the General 
Accounting Office, which tells us a whole lot about the status of these 
Medicare HMO choice plans. Basically, the message is pretty clear. HMOs 
are not working in Medicare for either our seniors or for the 
taxpayers, because what we have seen, last year we had several hundred 
thousand seniors receive notices of cancellation of their HMO+Choice

[[Page H11513]]

plans. I believe it was 328,000. And here this year, we have had almost 
a million receive a notice of cancellation.

  The bottom line is, our seniors know that these HMOs cannot be 
depended upon, and I think what we see in the GAO report is that not 
only are they dropping out and canceling our seniors, but on average, 
it is costing the taxpayer more for a senior to sign up for these 
Medicare HMOs than regular fee-for-service Medicare costs.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn).
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, let me just give my colleagues some facts. 
One of my friends that I went to high school with managed the health 
care for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart discovered 7 years ago that HMOs are a 
terrible way to provide health care; it costs more. It costs them 19 
percent more. They no longer have any HMOs.
  The other thing, and I am sure that the gentleman is not aware of 
this, is that both sides of the aisle, when these bills were both in 
the Committee on Ways and Means and in the Committee on Commerce, had 
near unanimous votes on all of these issues, specifically the HMO 
funding, much to my chagrin.

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