[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 143 (Tuesday, September 25, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10888-H10889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    IMPROVING CHILDREN'S HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Tim Murphy) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, within the past hour, 
the House voted to pass a bill on the Children's Health Insurance 
Program, a laudable program that all Members agree is important to help 
children with their health care needs.
  Unfortunately, the debate was filled with much rhetoric, and it is 
important that we cut through all that rhetoric to understand that 
despite comments made, neither Republicans nor Democrats nor the White 
House nor anyone else dislikes children. We all want them to have the 
best health care they can get, and we will continue to work to make 
sure that happens. But as that bill was voted on on this floor with a 
threat of the White House to veto it, feeling it was not an appropriate 
bill, it appears that there may be enough votes to sustain that veto.
  During the coming days or weeks as the Senate also looks at this bill 
and as it goes to the White House, Congress has a couple of choices. 
First of all, Congress may take this as an opportunity to gain 
political points, spending untold hundreds of thousands of dollars on 
campaign ads attacking each other, perhaps saying that each side 
doesn't care about children, perhaps trying to sway votes so that the 
veto is not sustained, accusing people of horrendous things which are 
not true. Or Congress can do what the American people expect us to do, 
and use this as an opportunity to make things even better.
  Now, I believe there were a lot of good things in that bill, and I 
think all Members agree that there are important aspects about 
children's health insurance we need to support. But shouldn't we also 
use this as an opportunity to make things better?
  There are elements in this bill that looked at some things to help 
with prevention, obesity, case management, health information 
technology, things that I have been talking about in this Chamber for 
the last 4 years as important things to help us save money. But let me 
review a few of these and say what we need to do and what we should be 
doing as Members of Congress to use this bill that will help several 
million children with their health care as a vehicle to find real 
change with health care. Instead of us continuing to come to this 
Chamber and debate how we are going to finance health care, we should 
be talking about how to fix health care.
  The problem with health care is not just that the costs are too high 
and people can't afford them. The concern is that there is so much 
waste in our health care dollars that people cannot afford it, perhaps 
as much as $400 billion a year wasted on our health care system. If we 
are able to reduce that waste in health care, we can make health care 
more affordable, and we wouldn't have to be dealing with how do we find 
the money to fund children's health insurance or adult health 
insurance. By fixing the system, we could change that.
  For example, health care-acquired infections this year will account 
for something like $50 billion in waste. This chart next to me 
indicates that just as of this evening, as of this evening there has 
been at least this many cases who have picked up infections in America, 
almost 1.5 million cases here, while some indications are that it may 
be much more than that. There have been some 66,000 deaths so far this 
year, one every 5 minutes, and so far spending, some $36 billion in 
health care-acquired infections which are preventable through hand 
washing, sterilized equipment, using clean procedures.
  Health information technology, if we stop talking about it and work 
with hospitals to invoke it, can save $162 billion in reducing errors. 
If we do more with case management, we could reduce the big bulk of 
dollars spent on people who have chronic illnesses such as heart 
disease and other problems.

[[Page H10889]]

  If we worked to reduce maternal smoking, we can reduce premature 
births, problems with low birth weights, asthma, respiratory distress 
symptoms, and so many other problems that infants experience, if we 
work to reduce maternal smoking.
  Now, we have a choice here. We can continue to argue as a House over 
who has the better plan, the Republicans' or Democrats' plan; or we can 
really get together over these next several days and say we need to fix 
our broken health care system, not continue to finance it. We need a 
health care system that is focused on patients and not politics. We 
need a health care system that is focused on patient safety and patient 
quality and where patients can choose their doctors and hospitals.
  I hope this is not a time that Americans will continue to see 
politicians beat their chest and say ``my plan is better''; ``no, my 
plan is better.'' I know if every few minutes a child or an adult is 
dying from an infection they picked up in a hospital, if we know the 
chronic illnesses they face continue to be so difficult to manage, and 
it is odd to me that Medicare and Medicaid will spend thousands of 
dollars to amputate the foot of someone who has severe diabetes, but 
won't spend $5 to have some nurse call that person and check up on them 
with care management, something is wrong and something is broken with 
that system.
  If we really and truly care about children, as I believe we do, if we 
really and truly care about the health care of Americans, as I believe 
we all do, shouldn't we be focusing our time instead on how to fix the 
system and use the compassion in our hearts to roll up our sleeves and 
work together and stop this continued fighting for the sake of 
political points.
  I believe that is what America wants, I believe that is what America 
needs, and I believe that is what they sent us here to take care of.

                          ____________________