[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 165 (Friday, November 6, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H12559-H12560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE MOTHER OF ALL UNFUNDED MANDATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Roe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress to help enact 
health care reform. As a physician, I've seen firsthand the problems 
insurance companies have created for patients. I've seen firsthand how 
government programs have made beneficiaries worse consumers of health 
care. I've seen how the cost of health care has exploded so much so 
that many can't afford insurance. I've seen all of these problems, and 
I want to help fix them.
  When I first heard that the Democrats were proposing to insert a 
government competitor into the insurance marketplace, I thought, 
surely, they can't be serious. When I realized they were, I thought I 
could change their opinions by telling them about the real-life 
failures I've seen under our State's program, known as TennCare, and 
how H.R. 3200--now H.R. 3962--is simply a bad extension of these 
mistakes.
  For months, I've gone to the House floor with many of my physician 
colleagues to talk about the problems with this plan. The TennCare plan 
tried to provide universal coverage and to make health insurance 
affordable. In the end, it nearly bankrupted the State as the program's 
cost tripled. It created an incentive for beneficiaries to seek 
unnecessary care because it cost them nothing. It shifted costs to the 
private plans, which were forced to make up these underpayments of the 
government program by increasing everyone's premiums. In the end, 45 
percent of those on the public plan previously had private insurance, 
and they either dropped their coverage or were dropped by their 
employers.
  Our Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, saved our State's budget by 
doing something very hard. He cut the rolls. He controlled costs. He 
introduced an alternative plan called Cover Tennessee, which requires 
an equal contribution from employers, individuals, and the government. 
It is a model for shared responsibility. Incidentally, Governor 
Bredesen has called this bill on the floor the mother of all unfunded 
mandates.
  Democrats continued to ignore this evidence. I have asked President 
Obama three separate times since July to sit down and talk about a 
health care bill and to talk about what I know the effects to be, yet 
I've received no call from the White House. It's one thing to disagree 
with evidence that undermines the premise of the reform you're pushing, 
but to not even consider it is unbelievable.
  So here we are today with a health care bill that's over 2,000 pages. 
It's loaded up like a Christmas tree with special interest provisions. 
Sanitation facilities for Indian tribes, biofuel tax credits, nutrition 
standards for chain restaurants, and references to pizza and doughnuts 
all made it into this bill, but somehow Democrats could not come up 
with a real solution for medical malpractice reform except to try

[[Page H12560]]

to protect the trial lawyers' share of jury awards. Malpractice has 
proven to cost the health care system billions of dollars each year, 
but the reforms being proposed make the current system worse.
  This bill taxes everyone and everything. It taxes medical devices. It 
taxes individuals who choose not to purchase insurance. It drives up 
premiums for individuals who do purchase insurance. It taxes employers 
who fail to offer health insurance. It then taxes them further if they 
try to increase their employees' wages. It taxes small business owners, 
who would be creating jobs and getting us out of this recession. 
Instead, it forces them to cut jobs or wages. It taxes health savings 
accounts, which reduces the use of catastrophic health insurance 
coverage.
  It cuts Medicare. Home health care, skilled nursing facilities, and 
Medicare Advantage will all be cut. Seniors with prescription drug 
coverage will see their premiums increase. Seniors oppose this bill 
because they get it. Their care is going to be decreased, and costs are 
going up.
  After the bill finishes up taxing everything and everyone, it spends 
all that money even faster. Despite the fact I've never heard anyone 
say they want access to this program, the bill dramatically expands 
Medicaid. It creates a huge, new Federal bureaucracy to navigate 
through, and it funds a government competitor to private insurance 
companies which will syphon people off of private insurance onto a 
Medicaid-like program, just like Tennessee did with TennCare.
  After the Democrats finish spending $1.5 trillion, they say the bill 
is ``deficit neutral,'' but they ignore that every major government 
health care expansion before it--Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, which are 
just to name a few--have cost more than originally estimated. They 
completely ignore the fact that they use 10 years of revenue to pay for 
7 years of new spending. In the second decade, this program will become 
an enormous unfunded mandate on State governments, on individuals, and 
on the Federal Government. Despite the largest deficit in our Nation's 
history, the Democrats are irresponsibly going forward to make it 
harder than ever to balance the budget.
  Here is the bottom line: The bill costs too much. It taxes too much. 
It does little to improve health care. It will result in the majority 
of Americans being left with decreased access, decreased quality, and 
increased costs. It is, as The Wall Street Journal called it, the worst 
bill ever, and it deserves to be rejected.

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