[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 116 (Wednesday, July 29, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8264-S8265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to 
speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article by 
Martin Feldstein, ``Obama's Plan Isn't the Answer'' printed in the 
Washington Post, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 28, 2009]

                     Obama's Plan Isn't the Answer

                         (By Martin Feldstein)

       For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health 
     insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher 
     taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their 
     current insurance because of unemployment or early 
     retirement.
       President Obama's primary goal is to extend formal health 
     insurance to those low-income individuals who are currently 
     uninsured despite the nearly $300-billion-a-year Medicaid 
     program. Doing so the Obama way would cost more than $1 
     trillion over the next 10 years. There surely must be better 
     and less costly ways to improve the health and health care of 
     that low-income group.
       Although the president claims he can finance the enormous 
     increase in costs by raising taxes only on high-income 
     individuals, tax experts know that this won't work. 
     Experience shows that raising the top income-tax rate from 35 
     percent today to more than 45 percent--the effect of adding 
     the proposed health surcharge to the increase resulting from 
     letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income taxpayers--
     would change the behavior of high-income individuals in ways 
     that would shrink their taxable incomes and therefore produce 
     less revenue. The result would be larger deficits and higher 
     taxes on the middle class. Because of the

[[Page S8265]]

     unprecedented deficits forecast for the next decade, this is 
     definitely not a time to start a major new spending program.
       A second key goal of the Obama health plan is to slow the 
     growth of health-care spending. The president's budget calls 
     explicitly for cutting Medicare to help pay for the expanded 
     benefits for low-income individuals. But the administration's 
     goal is bigger than that. It is to cut dramatically the 
     amount of health care that we all consume.
       A recent report by the White House Council of Economic 
     Advisers claims that the government can cut the projected 
     level of health spending by 15 percent over the next decade 
     and by 30 percent over the next 20 years. Although the 
     reduced spending would result from fewer services rather than 
     lower payments to providers, we are told that this can be 
     done without lowering the quality of care or diminishing our 
     health. I don't believe it.
       To support their claim that costs can be radically reduced 
     without adverse effects, the health planners point to the 
     fact that about half of all hospital costs are for patients 
     in the last year of life. I don't find that persuasive. Do 
     doctors really know which of their very ill patients will 
     benefit from expensive care and which will die regardless of 
     the care they receive? In a world of uncertainty, many of us 
     will want to hope that care will help.
       We are also often told that patients in Minnesota receive 
     many fewer dollars of care per capita than patients in New 
     York and California without adverse health effects. When I 
     hear that, I wonder whether we should cut back on care, as 
     these experts advocate, move to Minnesota, or wish we had the 
     genetic stock of Minnesotans.
       The administration's health planners believe that the new 
     ``cost effectiveness research'' will allow officials to 
     eliminate wasteful spending by defining the ``appropriate'' 
     care that will be paid for by the government and by private 
     insurance. Such a constrained, one-size-fits-all form of 
     medicine may be necessary in some European health programs in 
     which the government pays all the bills. But Americans have 
     shown that we prefer to retain a diversity of options and the 
     ability to choose among doctors, hospitals and standards of 
     care.
       At a time when medical science offers the hope of major 
     improvements in the treatment of a wide range of dread 
     diseases, should Washington be limiting the available care 
     and, in the process, discouraging medical researchers from 
     developing new procedures and products? Although health care 
     is much more expensive than it was 30 years ago, who today 
     would settle for the health care of the 1970s?
       Obama has said that he would favor a British-style ``single 
     payer'' system in which the government owns the hospitals and 
     the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a 
     shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry. 
     The Obama plan to have a government insurance provider that 
     can undercut the premiums charged by private insurers would 
     undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single-payer plan. It 
     is hard to think of any other reason for the administration 
     to want a government insurer when there is already a very 
     competitive private insurance market that could be made more 
     so by removing government restrictions on interstate 
     competition.
       There is much that can be done to improve our health-care 
     system, but the Obama plan is not the way to do it. One 
     helpful change that could be made right away is fixing the 
     COBRA system so that middle-income households that lose their 
     insurance because of early retirement or a permanent layoff 
     are not deterred by the cost of continuing their previous 
     coverage.
       Now that congressional leaders have made it clear that 
     Obama will not see health legislation until at least the end 
     of the year, the president should look beyond health policy 
     and turn his attention to the problems that are impeding our 
     economic recovery.

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