[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 87 (Thursday, June 11, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6533-S6534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I wish to say I have great concern not 
just about the ownership interests the Federal Government already has 
in financial institutions and in auto companies and in insurance 
companies but also about what we are hearing might happen with health 
care.
  My view is, having a government plan, a government takeover of health 
care would again be an intervention into the marketplace on a scale and 
on a level I don't think most Americans want to see. It is referred to 
around here as a public plan option, but let's call it what it is: It 
is a government plan. It is a government-run health care system. The 
more you have the government involved in the decisions with respect to 
health care, the more the government is going to dictate many of the 
decisions that are going to be made and traditionally are made between 
a patient and a physician, in consultation with each other, between a 
consumer and a health care provider. Those types of interactions occur 
today in the marketplace. If the government is imposed into that 
particular situation, it seems to me at least we are going to have the 
government making more and more decisions with respect to health care: 
Which treatments are going to be approved;

[[Page S6534]]

which ones are effective; which ones are cost-effective. And that 
critical, fundamental relationship between a physician and a patient, 
we could be creating barriers in that relationship that are not going 
to provide for the high quality, optimum level of health care and 
treatment we have experienced in this country for a long time.
  Clearly, I think we all have to acknowledge there are things that 
need to improve in the health care system in this country. We need to 
reform our health care system. We need to bring the costs down. We need 
to figure out ways to make health care available and accessible to more 
Americans so that many of those who don't have health care have access 
to it and to get costs under control. But there are lots of ways that 
can be done by building upon the strengths we have in the current 
system; not throwing it completely away in exchange for a government-
run system, which would ration health care, limit the amount of choices 
Americans would have, and cost the taxpayers an awful lot of money. 
Because I think, at the end of the day, most of the estimates that have 
been done--and it is hard to know because we don't have a specific 
proposal out there yet that has been costed or a revenue source that 
has been identified for it, but I think all the estimates we have seen 
so far suggest that this plan, the health care plan that is being 
proposed by the President and by the Democratic leadership in the 
Congress, is going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion 
to $2 trillion. We don't know exactly. I have heard $1.2 trillion, $1.5 
trillion. I have heard up to $2 trillion, but we know that is an 
enormous amount of money, and that revenue has to come from somewhere. 
One-sixth of the American economy today, one-sixth of our economy, 
entire economy in this country is health care, headed toward one-fifth. 
So we are going to hand the keys over to the Federal Government and 
allow them to control an enormously large component of the American 
economy--one-sixth of it today and it will be one-fifth in just a few 
years. It seems to me that would be a bad precedent and something, 
again, that would lead us further and further down a path of greater 
control for the Federal Government in our private economy. I don't 
think that is good for health care for Americans. I don't think that is 
good again for American business, for the economy or for our ability to 
create jobs.
  The bill I introduced, as I said, is designed to get at the TARP 
moneys that are going to be paid back in and hopefully getting the 
government out of the car business, the government out of the banking 
business, and the government out of the insurance business, but I also 
view those as almost what I would characterize as gateway drugs that 
are going to lead the way for the nationalization or the government 
takeover of health care. A government plan is not a good way to do 
business, and it is certainly not in the best interests of Americans, 
who, I think, even though there may be those who want to see the costs 
of our current health care system come down, those who have coverage 
today, most of them would argue we have a system that is pretty 
effective; that when you need to get seen by a doctor, when you need to 
get treated, when you need to use some of the modern equipment and 
technology we have available and that is there today--and I think that 
is very much in jeopardy if you allow the government to intervene and 
to impose itself into that decisionmaking process and begin to ration 
care.

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