[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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