[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 165 (Friday, November 6, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H12560-H12561]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           THE REPUBLICAN ALTERNATIVE FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak 
about the Democratic plan that will encompass 2,000-plus pages, 400,000 
words, more than $1.3 trillion in costs, over $800 billion in tax 
increases, and the likelihood that it will kill more than 5 million 
jobs. Today, I would like to talk about the Republican alternative that 
will be offered when this legislation comes up for a vote, and I would 
like to contrast it with what we are talking about.
  The Republican alternative lowers health care premiums. According to 
the Congressional Budget Office, the

[[Page H12561]]

alternative would reduce health insurance premiums by up to 10 percent 
for employees who get coverage through small businesses with 50 or 
fewer employees. According to the CBO estimates, all told, under the 
GOP plan, premiums for millions of families would be nearly $5,000 
lower than Speaker Pelosi's cheapest insurance plan.
  It guarantees affordable coverage for patients with preexisting 
conditions. The Republican alternative makes it illegal for an 
insurance company to deny coverage to someone with prior coverage on 
the basis of a preexisting condition. So, if you lose your health 
insurance because you lose your job, because you move or get divorced 
or just want to change plans, you are protected.
  It protects seniors' Medicare benefits. Under the plan offered by 
Speaker Pelosi, there are more than $500 billion in cuts in the 
Medicare program at a time when baby boomers--those born after World 
War II--are starting to retire. We're going to need to have reforms of 
the Medicare program to achieve savings, but those savings are going to 
have to be plowed back into the Medicare program to pay for the 
millions of Americans who are going to become eligible for that 
program.

                              {time}  2015

  The Republican alternative has no tax increases, none, nada, zip, 
period, no tax increases compared to more than $800 billion in tax 
increases primarily focused on small businesses.
  In fact, the Republican alternative encourages small businesses to 
offer health care coverage without taxing job creation. Unlike Speaker 
Pelosi's bill, which punishes small businesses with onerous mandates 
and exorbitant taxes that the CBO says will be passed on to the 
employees in the form of lower wages, the Republican alternative plan 
gives small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care 
at lower prices just as corporations and labor unions do.
  It enacts real medical liability reform to cut down on the amount of 
defensive medicine, and the Congressional Budget Office says it will 
save the Medicare and Medicaid programs $54 billion alone, much less 
additional savings that will come to private insurance companies and 
hospitals and doctors in terms of the reduction in defensive medicine 
that will be practiced. It prohibits abortion funding, a serious 
problem in the Democratic alternative that has caused a great deal of 
turmoil on their side of the aisle.
  There's no entitlement expansions, forcing Americans on to a 
government-run plan, and it reduces the deficit. According to the CBO, 
the Republican alternative reduces the deficit by $68 billion over the 
next 10 years and continues to reduce the deficit in the second budget 
window.
  Compare this to the plan offered by Speaker Pelosi, which will raise 
premiums on health insurance for individuals. It will reduce health 
care choices. It will cause delays and denials of care. It will take 
$500 billion in Medicare cuts and $729.5 billion in new taxes.
  Now, this new bill that has been offered by the Democrats is 2,000 
pages long. You may recall that the last bill offered by them was only 
a thousand pages long and had 53 new government agencies and programs. 
In fact, many may be familiar with this diagram that shows what 
additional new programs were created under the 1,000 page bill. You 
might think this is pretty confusing and would cause a lot of 
difficulty for a lot of people. Well, guess what?
  With a 2,000-page bill they added another more than 90 new programs 
and agencies to the 53 that are on the original chart. Here is the 
original chart. This is all of the bureaucracy and confusion and cost 
that has been added in this new bill. If anyone on either side of the 
aisle has any doubt about whether the simple proposals offered by the 
Republican alternative have broad-based public support, most of these 
proposals, 60, 70, 80 percent of the American people support. Certainly 
they do not support this kind of bureaucracy. Certainly they do not 
support the kinds of tax increases that could cost as many as 5.5 
million jobs, according to one projection out today. And they certainly 
do not support this kind of government takeover of our American health 
care system.

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