[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1702-H1707]
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 3, 2001, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to talk about
health care and my concern that in the first 100 days of the Bush
administration, we have seen no action, effectively, on the major
health care concerns that affect the American people, that my
constituents are talking to me about and that many of my colleagues in
Congress, in the House of Representatives, not only on the Democratic
side but also on the Republican side, have identified, issues that we
have identified as important that need to be addressed in this
Congress. I want to mention three tonight. There are many, but I want
to mention three, if I could: one is the need for a Medicare
prescription drug benefit; the second is the need to reform HMOs, the
so-called Patients' Bill of Rights; and the third is the mounting
problem of so many Americans, maybe 45 million Americans at this point,
who have no health insurance.
Before I get to those three points, though, I probably should point
out that the President's budget sends sort of a defining message with
regard to health care by essentially not only dealing with some of
these problems effectively but also by threatening through the size of
the tax cut that he recommends, which is primarily for the wealthy and
corporate interests, to possibly raid or effectively raid the Medicare
as well as the Social Security trust fund.
So I guess there is no reason why we should be under any illusions,
if you will, that President Bush effectively wants to address some of
these health care issues when the reality is that his budget probably
would harm health care, particularly for seniors, by tapping into the
Medicare trust fund and certainly doing nothing that would improve the
future viability of that trust fund. I know that we may be addressing
the budget tomorrow or Thursday or sometime in the next week or so, and
that is one of my major concerns, that the budget proposal through the
tax cut proposal would dip into the Medicare trust fund and affect its
future.
But I want to get back to the three issues that I wanted to address
tonight that are health care-related and talk a little bit about each
of those, if I could. One of the major problems that my constituents
talk about, and I know it is true for all my colleagues because we have
talked about it on the floor and we have had many discussions, the fact
that so many seniors today are negatively impacted due to the cost of
prescription drugs.
In my own State of New Jersey and in many States, we have enacted
legislation that would provide prescription drug benefits, some more
generous than others, depending on the State, for low-income seniors.
But Medicare, which, of course, is the main health care program, the
health care program that most seniors rely upon, that is universal,
does not include a prescription drug benefit. You may be able to get it
if you have an HMO, but increasingly the HMOs do not provide
prescription drug benefits or very limited benefit.
{time} 1915
So what we see is more and more seniors taking money out of their
pockets to pay for increasingly high costs for prescription drugs.
I happen to chair our Democratic Health Care Task Force where we took
up this issue, but many of my colleagues on the Democratic side, and
certainly some on the Republican side as well, felt that we needed to
provide a prescription drug benefit in the context of Medicare so that
all seniors, not just low-income seniors but middle-income seniors who
are impacted probably more than anybody else, because in most States
there is no benefit for them, there is no protection for them, need to
have this kind of a benefit.
The Democrats came up with a bill which we introduced in the last
Congress, and I just want to summarize that if I could, the major
features of that bill, to get an idea of the type of prescription drug
benefit that I think we need.
First of all, the Democratic bill, called the Prescription Benefit
Act of 2000, was universal and voluntary; established a voluntary
prescription drug benefit program for seniors and disabled in Medicare
beginning in 2002.
Enrollment is voluntary when a senior or disabled person first
becomes eligible for Medicare or if and when they
[[Page H1703]]
lose coverage from an employer, an HMO plan, or Medicaid. Enrollees
would receive Medicare payments for covered drugs from any
participating pharmacy and are charged negotiated discounted prices on
all of their covered drug purchases regardless of whether the annual
benefit limit has been reached, the idea being that we want to pool all
the seniors in a Medicare benefit so that the cost of prescription
drugs is significantly less.
In terms of the benefit, the proposal that the Democrats put forth
last year would pay for at least 50 percent of the negotiated price for
the drug, up to 50 percent of annual limits equal to $2,000 through
2002 to 2004, and it goes up to $5,000 to 2009, and then adjusted for
inflation. So 50 percent of the cost from the first prescription that
one buys and then up to $5,000. There was a catastrophic benefit beyond
that that one would not pay anything.
The main thing I want to point out, though, is that this was a
universal benefit. What the Democrats have been saying is that everyone
in Medicare should be eligible for a prescription drug benefit. That is
because most of the people that are complaining to us about the cost of
prescription drugs and not having coverage are, in fact, middle-income
seniors, not the very poor who often have, as in my State of New
Jersey, some kind of a program to pay for their prescription drugs.
Now, during the course of the campaign, President Bush said that he
wanted to address the concerns of seniors and he wanted to enact, if he
was elected President, a prescription drug benefit. It was not quite
clear what he had in mind. He was pretty general about it, but he
certainly suggested that it was not just for low-income seniors. It
would be for all seniors.
Now so far in the first 100 days of this administration the only
proposal that we have received is one that was basically included in
the budget for, I think, about $150 billion, which is woefully
inadequate in any case, for a low-income prescription drug benefit. I
do not even want to stress this that much, Mr. Speaker, but I need to
stress that there has been no push for this. It is one thing for the
President to get up during the campaign and say I want a prescription
drug benefit. It is another thing for him to change later and say, when
he is elected, well, this is going to be primarily for the low-income
or exclusively for low-income people.
We all know that from the bully pulpit of the Presidency that if one
wants to get something done they simply come down here to the
Republican leadership that is in the majority in both Houses and say
this is a priority, we want to get this done and we want to get it done
now.
We are not getting that. We are not getting any suggestion from the
White House that this is a priority. Nobody is sitting down here with
either the Republican leadership or the Democrats, certainly not
effectively, and saying that we want to do something here and we want
to move this. There may have been some hearings, but there is no
legislation that is moving in any committee that would provide a
prescription drug benefit.
I want to be a little critical of what the President has proposed
because I want people to understand, and my colleagues to understand,
that it really does not help too many people because it is a low-income
benefit; but even more I want to stress over and over again that there
is no push even to do this.
Let us just analyze briefly what the President's medicine proposal,
prescription medicine proposal, is.
Basically, the way he defines it, he says it would limit full
prescription coverage to Medicare beneficiaries with incomes up to 35
percent above the poverty line. So that is up to $11,600 for
individuals and $15,700 for couples, and seniors with out-of-pocket
prescription spending of $6,000 per year. Basically, we are talking
about people at a fairly low-income level.
In my own State of New Jersey, the people that would be covered by
the President's proposal would already be eligible for our low-income
prescription drug plan that is financed through casino revenue funds. I
would suspect that that is going to be the case in a lot of other
States that we are only dealing with fairly low-income seniors, many of
whom are already provided some kind of coverage by their State; but
even if they are not, it is not a large percentage of the Medicare
senior population that needs a prescription drug benefit.
I would venture to say that unless one is fairly well-to-do today,
they are suffering if they have to pay for their prescription drugs out
of pocket.
Now just to point out that the Democrats really mean business, when
the President's budget came over, or when the House budget which
essentially reflected the President's budget came over, to the Senate,
the Democrats basically sought to double the amount of money that would
be available for a prescription drug program from essentially $150
billion, which was the President's proposal, to about $300 billion, on
the assumption that we could have some sort of universal benefit if it
were to pass.
Of course, the President has canned that and said he does not support
it.
Just to point out how important this issue is and that I am not just
talking about this in the abstract but I know that it is something that
is really crucial to the average senior, just last week in the New York
Times there was an article, April 23, about States creating plans to
reduce costs for drugs. It outlined how so many of the States now are
putting in place prescription drug programs because they realize the
necessity of them; but again, a lot of this is just for low-income
seniors. A lot of it does not cover that many people.
I maintain that rather than look to the States to create these plans
which oftentimes are limited and which frankly they cannot afford, the
Federal Government should be taking a lead. Basically, the fact that so
many States are dealing with this issue, and trying to, cries out, in
my opinion, for a Federal solution.
Another area where I think that the average American is losing out
with regard to health care needs is on the issue of HMO reform and
Patients' Bill of Rights. Before I get to that, I see that one of my
colleagues is here; and I know that she has been out front on these
health care issues for a long time now, so I would like to yield, if I
could, Mr. Speaker, to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished
colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). I particularly
thank him for the persistent and dedicated leadership. Listening to
him, I could not help but come to join him and raise some of the
concerns that I have, particularly because I think it is important. I
heard some lightheartedness made about our schedule; and I think it is
important to note that, of course, the Democrats do not make the
schedule for the House. The gentleman was just providing a long litany
of needs, and I would really prefer to be here working with these
issues, grappling with these issues.
Yesterday I spent a day in my district, called a day of community
health, with the U.S. Surgeon General. What we did, rather than give
speeches in a big auditorium, we went to different health centers to
look at the different needs that our community has. We focused, first,
on the fact that cancer is maybe the second disease or second highest
death rate in our minority community and in our community. We looked at
trauma, the needs of our trauma facilities; and lo and behold, we found
out that across the Nation there is a nursing crisis; we do not have
enough nurses to deal with health care.
We looked at HIV/AIDS. We looked at the question of children's health
care, elderly care, and infant mortality. I raise these issues with the
gentleman because it was a very productive day. We listened to the
people who were there working every day on the ground with these
issues.
The one thing that was noted is that health care dominates people's
conversation. As I look at the administration's budget, it gives me
pause for concern, particularly since we have about a million children
uninsured in Texas. We are only about 300,000 that we have enrolled. We
are looking forward to going to 400,000, but I still think that is not
enough. So I am interested in ensuring that the CHIPS program continues
to be funded at the level that is needed to insure every single child.
[[Page H1704]]
As the gentleman well knows, some of the programs relate to working
parents. This is not a handout of sorts. Some of these are the working
poor.
Just a few days ago, in the last 24 hours, the State of Texas took on
a bill of about $57 million, I think, for the City of Houston to help
pay for the insurance of public school workers. That is going to be a
big burden on our State of Texas; and of course, we appreciate the
leadership of the State legislature, but they obviously are going to
need collaborative support as it relates to the funding for our
hospital district, our county hospitals and, as well, as I said
earlier, as it relates to the care of our children.
The gentleman noted that we are still struggling with this whole
issue of prescription drugs for seniors. There is not a time that I go
to the district that that issue is not being raised; that working
seniors, and when I say working seniors, seniors that worked who now
are retired, have indicated that even with their pensions and Social
Security, the cost of prescription drugs is overwhelming. They are not
able to provide for themselves with housing and the upkeep of the needs
that they have and to pay their utilities, and particularly with the
emerging crisis in energy, and also pay for the prescription drugs.
So my point this evening is simply to say that there is a great
opportunity for us now to engage in real serious debate,
bipartisanship, to talk about issues that soon we will say we are too
overloaded with the appropriations process, the budget process and
there goes prescription drug benefits again.
I would simply like to ask the administration, and the Republican
leadership, can we not get down to the business of health care in
America? Can we not come up and pass the prescription bill that is
already filed, that is a bipartisan bill, that is waiting for us to
respond to?
Finally, might I say to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone),
he was just about going to provide some statistics on that, in fact I
think the American Association of Emergency Physicians is meeting here
and the American Medical Association raised a number of issues in their
meeting; we need the Patients' Bill of Rights. I do not know what the
holdup is. The last session we were almost at the front door or at the
brink of voting. I think we obviously passed it out of the House, never
got anywhere. How long do the American people have to wait? How long do
I have to continue to say to my constituents, we are working on it; we
are working on it? I hope that the administration realizes that there
is a great need in health care in America. Even in these days of
seeming prosperity, we are still fighting AIDS domestically as we are
fighting it internationally. We are seeing pockets of AIDS increase
that need to be addressed to ensure that these individuals continue to
have coverage for their particular needs.
So I thank the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone)
for this Special Order. I hope that we can draw the attention of the
administration on that 4 percent across-the-board cut that we do not
find that health care in America goes down rather than up, and I
believe that if the administration would listen they would know that
health care is number one in Americans' minds and hearts, and we need
to do something about it.
I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I hope we can get down to
work.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas
(Ms. Jackson-Lee) for her comments. I think she is very much on point.
When I go back to the district, I hear the same thing, what is being
done about the health care issues? As we heard, I identified the three:
the Medicare prescription drug, the HMO reform, and the problem of the
uninsured. I talked a little bit about the prescription drug benefit,
but the gentlewoman pointed out with regard to the problem for the
uninsured, I had very high hopes. If the gentlewoman remembers during
the campaign, President Bush mentioned dealing with the uninsured.
{time} 1930
But then when he gets here, we do not see any action. Even in his
confirmation hearings, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services,
Secretary Thompson, said that he wanted to expand the CHIP program, the
child health care initiative, to include adults, the parents of the
kids.
Again, you point out, we are not talking about people that do not
have a job or are not working. These are working parents who are above
the Medicaid guidelines, but they do not get health insurance on the
job and cannot afford it. So the idea was to expand CHIP to include the
parents.
We also know, if you do that, you get more kids signed up, maybe
selfishly so, if the parents are in it, the kids get in it too. I do
not want to analyze all that, but we are not seeing that happening.
The Secretary is talking about granting waivers. But as you know, in
many States the CHIP program has already exploded. I do not want to
read this editorial now, but I have one from my local paper, the Asbury
Park Press, a couple of weeks ago during our recess, and it points out
how the program has been so successful, they do not have enough money
to pay for it for the children.
Now, New Jersey has a waiver and is trying to expand it to the
adults. So many people signed up for it, they do not know where the
money is going to come from.
We do not have the money in the President's budget to expand the CHIP
program to take care of adults, let alone even take care of all the
kids, in my opinion.
Again, we heard about all these things once upon a time with
President Bush and his Cabinet, but it is not happening. The money is
not there. There is no initiative to say that CHIP should be
permanently expanded to include adults and, more important, there is no
money.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield just for a
moment, as I just wanted to conclude on that point, you have got an
exploding problem in New Jersey, and I have got an under-enrollment
problem in Texas. I still have about 500,000 or 600,000. And I see my
friend and colleague from Texas; he knows how hard we are working with
the Hispanic, African American and poor community to get them enrolled.
We still have work to do.
One of the other issues we have spoken about on this floor and still
needs work, and I just wanted to mention it as I close, is mental
health parenting. I was home this weekend and again that constituency
was raising the question about, do you all realize how important it is
to provide access to mental health services?
We all have legislative initiatives. They cannot be authorized and
then not funded. That is a real issue in this country; how long are we
going to have to wait to ensure that our insurance companies cover it?
But people who are getting monies, not from the insurance companies,
but using the public system, how do we provide them with mental health
coverage?
So there are a lot of issues we could be addressing, and I wish that
we would have the opportunity to do so.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want to yield in just
a minute to our other colleague from Texas, but the sad thing is the
administration, this Bush administration, keeps talking about what they
are going to do. But we do not really find that they are doing it.
We had Governor Thompson, now Secretary Thompson, before our Commerce
Health subcommittee last week, and he was touting the fact that he is
going to provide more money for community health centers. But if you
look at the Bush budget, and there is one paragraph here, it actually
gets aid to the uninsured.
So they are talking about trying to help with these community health
centers, but then they cut it. This is from the New York Times. ``The
Bush budget will propose deep cuts in health programs for people
without health insurance. Budget documents from the Department of
Health and Human Services show the programs providing health care
access for the uninsured will be reduced 82 percent to 20 million from
140 million in the current fiscal year. These programs received 40
million in 2000.''
So I hate to use the term not being honest or not being truthful, but
really, he is not being honest with the American people in terms of
what he is doing on these health care issues. He talks about what he is
going to do, but the money is not there and there is no
[[Page H1705]]
movement, no effort to do anything to Congress to move in that
direction.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I know he has been
adamant about access to health care for everyone and trying to make
sure it becomes not only accessible, but affordable to everyone. I want
to thank the gentleman for doing that and continuously pushing forward.
Let me just say things have gotten worse now. We have got over 44
million uninsured. That number continues to grow. As people become
unemployed, that is even going to get worse. And the reality is if you
live in America and you work in a small company, and you do not work
for government or for a major corporation, you do not have access to
health care.
You have to be indigent to be able to qualify for Medicaid, you have
to be elderly to qualify for Medicare, and if you are the working poor
out there, trying to make ends meet, you do not have access to health
care, both affordable and any type.
The reality is also that the increase in the prescription coverage we
have been trying to provide, I know from a minority perspective, a
large number of people, senior citizens on straight Medicare, and if
you do not have access to Medicaid, then you do not have any
prescription coverage and you do not have access to that.
I know the President has proposed that effort. But even his proposal,
if you look at it, would disenfranchise about 25 million senior
citizens that would not be able to have access to prescription
coverage, which is something critical.
At a time when we are talking about tax cuts, here is an issue that
if we could provide access to health care and affordable health care to
all Americans, we would have an opportunity to not only help businesses
and small businesses out there that are now having a rough time also
paying for that insurance to get access to health care, but we would be
providing everyone at least that opportunity when they got sick.
We talked about the fact that in America it is not a constitutional
right, but I was surprised, and some people do not realize that the
only ones who have a constitutional right to have access to health care
are prisoners in this country. Our prisoners have a right to have
access to health care, yet our working Americans out there that are
working do not have access to it and cannot afford to have access. That
is unfortunate.
The first 100 days, I have not heard the President say one word about
health care. I know his budget, you mentioned the community health
centers he had proposed, and I was real optimistic when he said he
proposed $3.6 billion for the next 5 years. Well, that has not happened
and that has not materialized. The community health centers are the
ones out there in the country providing that access in rural America
and urban areas for those individuals that do not have access to health
care, and that is important.
I want to also indicate that the President's budget also cuts
Medicaid by over $600 million. Here is an issue, and I mention Texas
because I am from Texas, we have had over 300 nursing homes that have
gone under, mainly because of the Medicare-Medicaid reimbursement in
Texas, one of the lowest in the country. Yet he is going to cut $600
million from Medicaid, which is for the indigent, and we are going to
have problems in that area based on that effort.
In addition, I want to share with you one of the areas, because I sit
on the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Veterans'
Affairs. In the area of veterans, he talked during the campaign about
the importance of the military, yet when it comes to veterans, he has
proposed a $1 billion increase. I want to share with you, that means
4.5 percent.
Well, in the area of health care, you can say the cost of living is
2.2, 2.3 percent, but in health care, it is over 15 percent.
Prescriptions have gone up by almost 20 percent in cost. So when you
look at an industry that is related to health, their cost of living is
a lot higher. It has been estimated it is close to 4.7 percent.
Basically what his revenues for our veterans is going to cover is
existing programs. Right now, we find a dilemma that those people that
have served our country when we needed them the most, they were there
for us, and now that they need us, we are not there for them.
There is no specific funding to reduce the lengthy delays in
veterans' access to VA health care. There is no specific funding to
improve quality of health care availability to veterans to rely on the
VA. There is no specific funding to fully implement the Veterans'
Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act, not to mention the fact that
when it comes to our veterans in the area of mental health, as my
fellow colleague, the gentlewoman from Houston, Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee)
indicated, in the area of mental health, at any one time you will find
over half a million veterans that are homeless out there, a lot of them
suffering from mental health problems. When it comes to that area, we
are not doing enough to be able to cover that. So we have a real
situation where we need to make sure that we are responsive to our
veterans.
I just want to add that I think it is important to recognize that
right now our colleagues back home in Texas, and I want to mention this
because this directly relates to our President, that when he was in
Texas, he also gave a major tax cut.
Well, as of September and August of this past year, 2 months before
the election, our State comptroller indicated that we were projected to
have a $5 to $6 billion surplus. That projection never materialized,
and in fact, supposedly we are down almost $11 billion in the hole. So
the State is having a real difficult problem, and there are some quotes
from both Democrats and Republicans, the fact that the State has been
left in a situation they have never been in in years.
What is going to happen with the tax cuts we are having now, without
having our priorities, without considering the issues that are before
us? We are going to find ourselves in a situation because of what he
did today.
Today, he proposed the missile defense. Here we have a $100 billion
proposal that we have already expended, by the way, since 1983 over $58
billion on this missile defense, which breaks every single treaty we
have had with Europe and Russia. We are the ones that are proposing it.
We are the ones that are breaking the treaty. We are the ones that
decided we wanted to do something different and are causing a problem.
We are going to expend major resources that should be going to services
and to our veterans and to other things.
I want to just add a couple of things. I chair the Task Force on
Hispanic Health Care, and one of the things we really need to kind of
look at in this country is the fact that in the 1980s, up to 1987, I
was in the public health community in Texas, and we were at a point of
almost closing down our tuberculosis hospital because we did not have
any cases.
The bottom line is that now there are over 15 million cases of
tuberculosis throughout this country, a large number; one-third of them
are along the border. So we need to be very cautious with those
infectious diseases, wherever they occur, in this country or in Africa,
because those diseases, if we do not take care of them now, the
medication that is being tested now and is not taken appropriately,
other types of viruses have come about that we do not have the
technology to deal with. If those diseases come into this country, we
are going to have a serious problem. So we are not spending enough when
it comes to tuberculosis.
When it comes to AIDS we have made some inroads, and, yes, the
statistics seem to be improving. But it is disproportionately now
hitting certain populations. Hispanics, for example, represent 20
percent of the cases, yet we only represent 13 percent of the
population.
When you look at AIDS throughout the world, and you would say, why do
you want to get involved in AIDS in Africa, it is because of the fact
that it is the same virus. If we do not treat it there, that virus will
grow and go elsewhere and eventually, if we are not careful, it will
come here too. So we need to be very cautious in those infectious
diseases and treat them as if they were right here in our backyard. If
we can treat them abroad, that is even
[[Page H1706]]
better, so they do not reach our borders. So it becomes real important
that we do those things.
I am hoping that as we move forward, and I know most Americans feel
that we should at least have access to that health care, affordable and
accessible care, I think that we can move forward on that. There are
some beautiful proposals out there that talk about access to health
care, and indicate that we can, because we are the country that expends
the most right now on health care, and they are saying we can cut that
by $150 billion if we come up with a new system, because we are based
on a system that is basically based on profits and not provided. If you
are sick, a lot of times you are let go and you are left and no one
wants to insure you.
So the bottom line is that, as Americans, we need to make sure we are
there for our senior citizens, we need to make sure that we are there
for our most vulnerable; and we have to make sure that those working
Americans have that opportunity to receive that care.
Once again, I want to thank the gentleman for his efforts. I know he
has been there right on the forefront, and I love the fact that he has
not let go of this issue; and it is something that is critical, and we
should not let it go, and we need to move forward on it.
{time} 1945
Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Texas.
The gentleman pointed out in the beginning of his statement, and I
just wanted to reiterate it again before we move to our colleague, the
gentleman from Connecticut, that not only is the problem with the
uninsured growing, I think a few years ago it was 40 million, now the
gentelman said it was almost 45 million uninsured, but I think, as the
gentleman pointed out, very importantly, that if the economy does not
continue to do well, and we know in the last few months there have been
problems, that the problem will get worse and a lot more people will
not have insurance.
Again, I am critical of the President, not because I do not like him
or anything, but just because he talks about these things but we do not
see the action, we do not see the money.
When the budget went over to the Senate, a resolution was passed to
actually put I think it was $28 billion in additional money into the
budget just to address the problem of the uninsured. It was passed
unanimously, and there were Democrats and Republicans who spoke out and
said that this was important.
Senator Wyden specifically talked about the economy slowing, and how
more people would need insurance because they would not be getting it
on their job.
Then we had Olympia Snowe, a Republican, talk about how this
additional money could be used to put adults into the CHIP program, the
way the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) was talking.
Then we even had Gordon Smith, who is a Republican, who said that the
measure could be used to help businesses reduce the costs of insurance
for their low-income employees, what the gentleman talked about.
I just do not understand what the resistance is on the part of the
Bush administration to trying to address these issues. Again, we hear a
lot of rhetoric, but we do not see any money. We do not see any effort
to come down here and try to prioritize this issue at all.
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. What I am afraid of, if the gentleman will yield, is
that he is going to move with a tax cut and then, in all honesty, come
forward, because there are a lot of needs now on the military budget,
and he has come up with a budget that almost does not provide anything
yet and he has not brought it forward, but I am sure right now there is
a real need for 40,000 new troops, we need $17 billion for
infrastructure, and if he pushes that missile effort, that is $100
billion, not to mention that we need a lot of other resources.
So I am afraid that instead of taking care of priorities now when we
do have the resources, we are going to find ourselves the way we found
ourselves in the 1980s. It is a political move from the Republican
right to pit the issue of the security of our Nation and our armies
against health care and education.
It is unfortunate that he is playing with the lives of all Americans
when it comes to access to health care at a time when we have the
resources to take care of those priorities, both on the military side
as well as on the health care side.
Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I thank him for
coming down to join me and others.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
New Jersey, and join with both my colleagues in terms of their comments
this evening as it relates to health care.
I especially want to laud the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone)
for his efforts. Oftentimes he is the lone sentinel, if you will, on
the watchtower of health care for everyone in this Nation.
With more than 44 million people without insurance and access to
health care across this Nation, I think Americans listening in often
wonder, as we talk to an empty Chamber, is there anyone home? Does
Congress listen to the concerns that we have?
To the gentleman's earlier point, I think that in the last campaign I
do not think that there was a person in this Chamber or clearly either
Presidential candidate that did not take almost blood oaths with
respect to providing prescription drug relief for senior citizens, and
to making sure that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid would be
taken care of.
I am sure that the President is well-intended, but as the gentleman
points out, the proof is not only in the budget, but in the resolve of
those of us in this building to address these issues forthrightly.
Many of us, like the gentleman, have done surveys in our district
with respect to prescription drugs, or have been home to town meetings
or on radio talk shows where we have listened to call after call of the
elderly, pleading to provide them with some relief, those elderly who
have to choose between the food they are going to put on their table,
the heating or cooling bills they are going to have to pay to their
utility companies, or the prescription drugs that their doctors require
them to take.
We know from the studies that the cost of the very same prescription
drugs that they need for blood pressure, for relief from arthritis,
they can get at half the price in Canada or Mexico.
I can say it no better than the woman on 60 Minutes who said, ``I
feel like I am a refugee from my own health care system in this
country.'' Will not Congress listen?
Let us not judge these first 100 days on the basis of civility, and I
give the President credit for changing the tone, but let us judge these
first 100 days on the resolve to truly reach out and help the greatest
generation.
Is it only lip service that we are paying Americans all across the
country, or are we firmly committed to come forward and allow them to
live out their final days in dignity, allow them not to be faced with
the godawful choice between the food on their table and the
prescription drugs their doctors are recommending that they take?
These are important decisions. When I go home to my district, people
say, ``You are not doing anything down there in Congress. It does not
seem as though the rhetoric during the campaign lives up to actual
action on the floor of either Chamber.'' Sadly, they are right.
I applaud the gentleman. I said to the people back in my district, I
am going to continue to come to the floor of this House and continue to
speak out on the need for us to provide the kind of relief that our
citizens need.
In this time of prosperity, in this time when we have the resources,
there is no excuse to turn our backs on the elderly. They should hold
our collective feet to the fire on this issue, because both parties,
all candidates, campaigned on this issue. Now it is a question of
delivering on this issue for the people we are sworn to serve.
We would do well to heed the advice of Hubert Humphrey, and remember
that those in need during a time of prosperity, whether they be the
children in the dawn of their life, the elderly in the twilight of
their life, or those
[[Page H1707]]
in the shadows of their life who need our help and assistance, this is
the time for us to act and respond.
I thank the gentleman again for providing this opportunity in this
special order for people to address the concerns of health care, and
specifically for me tonight to be able to talk about the need for
prescription drugs.
Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentleman, and thank him for coming
down and expressing and articulating his thoughts so well.
The gentleman talked mainly about the prescription drug issue. I
think of the three health care issues that I sort of highlighted, and
that we all highlighted tonight.
That is the one where I think there has probably been the most
disappointment because of, as the gentleman said, the rhetoric during
the campaign. It was certainly true on the part of President Bush or
then candidate Bush that this was going to be addressed and this was
going to be a priority, and it has not been.
We can argue about what kind of plan we should be putting into place,
and whether the Bush plan is different than the Democratic plan. I can
talk about that all night. But the bottom line is, I do not see any
movement. I do not see any effort by the President to come down here
and say, ``This is a priority and I want it enacted into law,'' even
his own proposal, as limited as it is.
I think we can see that on all these issues. Probably the one that he
most committed to was the Patients' Bill of Rights. I remember during
one of the debates when he specifically said, ``We have a Patients'
Bill of Rights, an HMO reform bill, that is on the books in my State of
Texas.'' And of course he did not comment on the fact that he never
signed it. But leaving that aside, it was in effect. He said, ``I would
like to see the same thing, and I would support the same thing on a
Federal level if I was elected President.''
Well, 100 days have passed. We had a bipartisan bill introduced in
the other Chamber. I think we had Senator McCain and Senator Kennedy.
Here we had a bipartisan bill. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) and
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) introduced a bill that was
modeled exactly on the Texas law.
They had a previous bill in the last Congress called the Patients'
Bill of Rights. They changed it slightly to conform exactly with the
Texas law on the liability law, on all the issues that have some
contention.
Within a couple of days, we saw the President come out and say,
``That is not acceptable. I do not like that bill.'' I think he went
before the cardiologists' association and said he would veto it if it
came to his desk.
This was bipartisan. I went to a press conference and there were some
pretty right-wing Republicans at that press conference supporting this
legislation.
Well, what is it that he wants? Is he telling us what he wants and
how he would like to change the McCain bill or the Dingell-Ganske bill?
No. I do not get feedback in the Subcommittee on Health and Environment
of the Committee on Commerce about what the President does want, so I
just have to conclude he does not want anything.
In other words, the rhetoric is out there, ``I want to pass this
bill, and I want to do in the United States what we did in Texas,'' but
I do not see any proposal coming from the White House to accomplish
that. I do not see any effort to prioritize it.
I would venture to say that the differences on the Patients' Bill of
Rights, for those who oppose it and those who are supportive, at this
point are so minimal that if we sat down in this room tonight, we could
work out the differences.
Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. There is no question. The compromise lies
right ahead of us.
I think what frustrates the American public is they see us talking
before an empty Chamber and they are wondering why the collective body
is not addressing these important issues; why they just seem to linger
on and on and on with no resolve.
I have a veteran from my hometown who has won three Purple Hearts
whose monthly pension does not equal what he pays in terms of
prescription drugs. This is what people are really seeking relief from.
I agree with the gentleman, people back home have talked passionately
about a Patients' Bill of Rights. Certainly the concern is there for
the uninsured that exist in this country, and the costs that our
hospitals are experiencing, as well, under the Balanced Budget Act of
1997.
But invariably, the real gut level emotion that I hear from people is
that they are being really hurt by the lack of a policy, the lack of a
program that will allow them to have the drugs that their doctors know
that they need in order to survive.
Shame on us for not continuing to move that forward. When I say
``us,'' I mean Democrats, Republicans alike. The President, the
Cabinet, all of us, we know that this is an important issue to all of
them.
I thank the gentleman for being one of the lone sentinels, as I said
earlier, who comes down here on a regular basis and makes sure that the
public understands that there are people out there that care, that
there are people willing to stand up and fight for what they believe is
right, and people who feel that this is a higher priority than a tax
cut.
Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman for the accolades. I want to thank
the gentleman for being so concerned, as well.
But I have to point out, because we are here tonight but we are going
to come back again, I have to point out that the President has his
party in the majority in the House of Representatives, and even though
it is 50-50 in the other body, the Vice President can break the tie.
So I try to explain to my constituents that as Democrats, and I know
it sounds very partisan, we do not have the ability to bring these
bills up, either in committee, or we do not even have the ability to
have a hearing. We certainly do not have an ability to bring the
legislation to the floor.
The only thing we can do is to continue to speak out, as we have
tonight, and demand action on these health care initiatives.
I know the gentleman is here tonight, and others, and we are
certainly going to continue to do that, because we know this is not pie
in the sky, this is important to the average person. Whether it is HMO
reform, it is a prescription drug plan, or it is access for the
uninsured, we have to address the issue.
I want to thank the gentleman again. I just want to repeat again, Mr.
Speaker, that although I am concluding now, we are going to be back
again until we see the President and the Republican leadership bringing
legislation up that would address these health care concerns.
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