[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 155 (Friday, October 23, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H11734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 DEMOCRATS' PLANS TO REFORM HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about 
the Democrats' plans to ``reform'' our health care system.
  You know, many promises have been made by the other side of the aisle 
about what these reforms would actually do, but now we actually have a 
definitive analysis, performed by the chief government actuary of the 
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to look at the consequences 
of these reforms. Well, Mr. Speaker, the diagnosis is not that good.
  Both the President and his economic advisors have said that whatever 
bill the President signs he wants to make sure that he bends the cost 
curve. Well, how does the Democrat health care stack up to that pledge?

                              {time}  1215

  According to that chief actuary whom I just mentioned, total spending 
on health care would actually increase by $750 billion more than if we 
did nothing at all. That's right. The Democrats' plan would bend the 
cost curve all right, but it would bend it in the wrong direction. You 
see, the real overall cost of this bill would be $1.2 trillion. That's 
with a T. By 2019, the annual cost of the entitlement expansion would 
be $236 billion, and that would be rising at an annual rate of 9 
percent every year. After all of this spending, there would still be 
around 20-some-odd million uninsured Americans. So, for those folks who 
are trying to keep score of all of this, that comes out to be about 
$35,000 per uninsured person out there.
  Now, another promise that the President made was that he said, ``if 
you like your current coverage, you keep it.'' Well, again, look back 
to that government actuary whom we talked about before. According to 
that chief actuary, that's not true if you're a senior on Medicare, 
because 8.5 million seniors on Medicare today would lose their current 
coverage, and they would be forced into some different coverage.
  Also contained in the bill are what we call arbitrary, across-the-
board payment cuts to hospitals, to nursing homes and to home health 
agencies. Again, let's see what the chief actuary says. The chief 
actuary says the cuts could force such organizations, such as nursing 
homes and home health agencies, to leave the Medicare program and, 
thus, ``possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.'' That 
doesn't really sound like keeping the coverage you want, does it?
  So maybe now, finally, the Democrat leadership in Congress will start 
to listen to at least a few of the ideas put forward by the 
Republicans. What we want to do is try to increase the access to health 
care coverage, to increase access to the health care delivery system 
and to make insurance more portable and affordable. What we want to do 
is try to reduce those long-term spending plans and to reduce the curve 
downward in order to bring down the cost of medical liability and to 
create a sustainable health care system.
  Finally, at the end of the day, Republicans stand today, as we have 
always in the past, ready to work with the Democrats to enact real 
reform to our health care delivery system as soon as they are ready to 
work with us.

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