[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 19, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H347-H350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is recognized 
for approximately 26 minutes.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving us the time 
and, in fact, we are very appreciative on our side of the aisle of 
having this opportunity this evening, Mr. Speaker, on, really, a 
historic day in which we finally delivered to the American people a 
promise that has been made over a year ago, that should this bill, this 
comprehensive health care reform bill sometimes referred to as 
ObamaCare but more formally known as Patient Protection and Affordable 
Care Act of 2010, should this legislation pass, that if we had the 
opportunity to take control of this House of Representatives to get 
that gavel away from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the prior 
Democratic majority, that our first and number one priority on behalf 
of the American people would be to repeal this mistaken bill.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, is the day that that happened and certainly I am 
extremely grateful, as cochairman along with my colleague, Tim Murphy 
from the great State of Pennsylvania, Dr. Murphy and I cochair the 
House GOP Doctors Caucus. Mr. Speaker, we grew our strength in this 
election, November 2. We had about 11 Members in their caucus, 11 very 
active hard-working Members who practiced medicine in one form or 
another, one specialty or another for many, many years.
  In fact, I think, Mr. Speaker, one time we calculated the number of 
years that we have actually practiced medicine, and it was something 
like 350 years of clinical practice. As you notice, Mr. Speaker, there 
is a little bit of a grayness around the temple of some of us.
  But we are very thankful for this election and the American people 
giving the Republican Party the opportunity to right this wrong and to 
bring seven additional Members, seven additional health care 
practitioners, again, some of them have been in practice many years, 
dentists, doctors, even some associate members of our group, some 
registered nurses to be part of this new majority.
  As we voted today on H.R. 2, the repeal bill of ObamaCare, I can 
assure you that 100 percent of us, in fact, 100 percent of Republicans, 
all 242 on our side of the aisle, plus, I think, three or four 
Democrats in a bipartisan way, joined with us in voting to repeal this 
bill.
  I realized this evening, Mr. Speaker, that our time is limited. I am 
very pleased that some members of the House GOP Doctors Caucus are with 
us.
  I would first like to take the opportunity to yield to my cochairman, 
Dr. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania. Dr. Murphy.
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I appreciate 
that.
  Let me talk about a couple of important aspects of this bill and 
understand that if you have a car and it has a flat tire, you don't get 
rid of the car; you change the tire. But if you have a car with a great 
tire and the car is not running and it's broken down, you get a new 
car.
  What we have here is a health care bill that indeed does have a few 
pages and some parts that we all agree on and we want to work on those 
together. However, there are also thousands of pages of other problems 
and tens of thousands of pages, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages 
yet to be written by boards, panels and commissions yet to be appointed 
on issues we have yet to know what is going to be included in this. And 
that is part of the reason why employers are frightened about what may 
be in this bill.
  Members of Congress shake their heads and say how could something so 
massive--and it's going to cost over a trillion dollars a year to 
administer this plan--how could this happen without Congress really 
having oversight? Let me mention two areas of this which I am deeply 
concerned about.
  We know that one of the ways we can provide better care and 
ultimately save a lot of money has to do with disease management, or 
care management.
  This is when perhaps nurses or other specialists within the doctor's 
office or working with the hospital, work to stay in touch with the 
patient, patients who have asthma or diabetes or heart disease or other 
chronic illness, because they know if they can get that patient to 
follow up with their medications, their treatments, their therapies, 
they can prevent problems from worsening. They can help make that 
patient better. They can keep that patient out of the hospital.
  In the area of mental health, chronic illness has twice the incidence 
of depression when it's not picked up, and when depression is present 
and not treated, costs double.

                              {time}  2140

  Now, unfortunately, this bill not only doesn't pay for this, but if 
you want something, the important area that did pay for it in Medicare 
Advantage, this bill in order to try and pay for it cut $500 billion 
worth of Medicare, and a significant portion of that was in something 
called Medicare Advantage which covers millions of people, 7.4 million 
seniors around the country.
  One of the clear, distinct advantages of Medicare Advantage is it 
provided this disease management. Here are a couple of examples: 
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found they could reduce 
rehospitalization rates for diabetics by 75 percent. Another hospital 
in my district, Washington Hospital, reduced readmission rates for 
heart disease by 50 percent. Another plan reduced asthma rate 
readmissions by 28 percent, all by doing this important care 
management.
  Well, unfortunately, if you like the plan you have, you can't keep it 
because this bill guts that and eliminates that portion of it.
  Now out of this 2,900-roughly-page bill, to have a couple sections 
that people are talking about, the benefits of why we should keep this 
bill, these are areas we agree on: maintain preexisting coverage, don't 
cut people because they're sick, let kids stay on their parents' policy 
for a little bit longer, all important parts and things

[[Page H348]]

we will continue to work on as a conference because we understand 
health care.
  And in particular this caucus made up of health care providers, we 
work with patients for many, many decades all together, hundreds of 
years, and we understand the bottom line is we must work on health care 
reform, and this bill just doesn't quite reform that.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank Dr. Murphy for his 
remarks. And now I would like to yield time to my colleague from the 
great State of Georgia. I represent the 11th District; he represents 
the 10th District in the Athens area. He is a great friend of mine, a 
family practitioner, Dr. Paul Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. I really appreciate 
your doing this Special Order tonight, and I look forward to this 
opportunity. We had great fun in the last Congress talking about how 
bad ObamaCare is, and I'm excited that today the Congress, the U.S. 
House of Representatives, voted to repeal it.
  I was on Neil Cavuto this evening, and Neil Cavuto played some tapes 
or speeches of our Democratic colleagues and said we've heard over and 
over again that the Republicans don't have anything to offer. We heard 
last Congress that the Republicans are the Party of No. Well we are the 
Party of K-n-o-w because we know how to lower the cost of health care. 
We know how to provide good quality health care at the lowest price. 
And we know how to create jobs and create a stronger economy. And those 
are the things that we're going to be doing in this Congress with the 
Republican majority. So I'm excited.
  But where do we go from here? Well, yesterday I introduced my bill, 
one of two that I had in the last Congress. I reintroduced one 
yesterday. The new number is H.R. 299. And what it would do is do five 
things. Number one is it would repeal ObamaCare if it is passed into 
law; number two, it would allow people to buy health insurance across 
State lines, which is a constitutional thing. Actually, we should under 
the commerce clause expand commerce. That's what the original intent of 
the commerce clause is. So that's what my bill would do.
  Thirdly, it will allow anybody in this country, businesses, 
individuals to join associations so that they could join a huge pool, 
and this would mean that they would have multiple insurance products 
that they could buy at a much lower cost than they're paying today.
  The fourth thing it would do is it would stimulate States to set up 
high-risk pools. Many States have already done that very successfully. 
And the fifth thing is it would allow everybody to deduct 100 percent 
of their health care costs off their income taxes, which would markedly 
change the dynamics of health care financing. I introduced that last 
time. I introduced it yesterday. My other bill, the Patient Option Act, 
it was H.R. 3889 in the last Congress, we will be reintroducing that.
  But our colleague from Georgia, Dr. Tom Price, who at the time was 
the RSC chairman, introduced the RSC bill, H.R. 3400 in the last 
Congress, which was the RSC's bill to reform health care financing. 
We've had multiple bills introduced. Why has nobody heard about these 
things? Well, because Nancy Pelosi has operated in a very dictatorial 
manner. She didn't want our bills to ever see the light of day and 
neither did the mainstream media. But I think you're going to see these 
bills come forward.
  We need to repeal and replace ObamaCare. ObamaCare itself is going to 
destroy jobs. It's going to destroy budgets. It's going to destroy the 
quality of health care. It's going to destroy jobs. We just had our 
friend, our Democratic colleague Keith Ellison from Minnesota, just 
here talking about how repealing it would hurt small businesses. Well, 
the simple truth is that keeping ObamaCare is going to hurt small 
businesses. I have talked to a lady, a small employer, she has right 
now, today, eight employees. She desperately needs to hire some more, 
but she's not going to until we repeal ObamaCare because of the 
financial strain it will put on her business. It's going to break the 
budgets of every State in this country with the increased Medicaid.
  We've got to repeal ObamaCare. We've got to replace it with something 
else that reduces the cost, not just slows the cost, but reduces the 
cost of every health care service and product in this country. And we 
can do that. My bill would do that. Other bills will do that.
  And, Dr. Gingrey, we're going to repeal and replace ObamaCare. We're 
going to put it out for the American people to see so that they know 
that the Republican Party is the party of K-n-o-w. We know how to solve 
these problems.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman 
from Georgia from the 10th Congressional District. The gentleman makes 
some great points. And colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I would 
ask you to look at the posters that we have here because what Dr. 
Murphy, Mr. Speaker, and Dr. Broun are talking about is really the 
plan. And the plan is not a plan, but it is a series of plans, if you 
will. It's a plan A, it's a plan B, and it's a plan C. And of course 
today, the repeal as depicted on this very first and second poster was 
at least a House completion of plan A, and that is repeal of ObamaCare 
as this poster depicts. Priority number one, we feel very strongly that 
that's what we need to do, and that's what we did in this House today.
  As Dr. Broun was talking about, Republican priority number two is not 
only to repeal it, but to replace it, because every one of us, 
particularly the members of the House GOP Doctors Caucus that are on 
the floor this evening, understand that nothing is perfect. And as Dr. 
Broun and others have said, we tried to bring forth legislation during 
the 111th Congress. We gave a copy of ``Better Solutions'' to the 
President, Mr. Speaker. Pages 8 and 9 were all about our plans and 
other options other than a government takeover, lock, stock and barrel, 
of the health care system. The President said, well, I got it, I read 
it, and then went on to say, they have no ideas, they won't bring me 
any ideas, if they only would.
  So priority number two, of course, replace ObamaCare with reforms 
that empower patients and protect our economy. And then, of course, as 
I say, Republican priority number three in this poster, repeal and 
defund provisions of ObamaCare until full repeal is successful if we're 
not able to get the Senate and the President to go along with us in 
regard to this full repeal. If they don't do it, quite honestly, they 
are not listening, Mr. Speaker, to the American people. They do that at 
their own peril.
  I would yield back to the gentleman from Georgia for 5 seconds.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. The President told us and the American people 
if anybody has any other idea besides ObamaCare, his door is always 
open. I know I knocked on his door and nobody was home. They didn't 
answer the door as they have for other members of our caucus.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to 
yield to one of our freshman members, the gentleman from Arizona, Dr. 
Paul Gosar. Dr. Gosar is a dentist and has been very, very active not 
only in his own practice in Arizona but in the American Dental 
Association. At this time I am proud to yield to a freshman member, our 
colleague, Dr. Paul Gosar.
  Mr. GOSAR. Thanks to my colleague, Dr. Gingrey, to acknowledge me for 
some time.
  As a practicing dentist for 25 years, I have seen how government-run 
health care actually works. It doesn't. I have actually seen where what 
we've done has spilled over into the private sector trying to laden the 
private sector with the liabilities from the public sector. What we 
have got to do is we've used creative accounting, taking 10 years of 
revenue to pay for 6 years of actual treatment. I don't know as a 
practicing dentist and as a businessman how that actually works in 
anybody else's terms.
  We also have to look back at our past to go forward. And there's 
three things I was always taught: look at your mistakes, where you're 
failing; look at your accounts and your liabilities; and then make sure 
that you make an equal playing field. That's what we haven't done here. 
Where is the tort reform? Where is the liabilities and assets that 
we've had? And make sure that we're using those properly. And

[[Page H349]]

last but not least is increase the competition in the marketplace, true 
insurance reform where we have insurance companies competing for us on 
the private sector as the individual on a patient-based center.
  I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

                              {time}  2150

  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Arizona and welcome him, of course, to the House GOP Doctors Caucus.
  Our final speaker, and I want to yield time to a cardiothoracic 
surgeon, Mr. Speaker, from Indiana, a new member, Dr. Larry Bucshon, 
and I think Dr. Bucshon was here on the floor a little earlier when the 
Democratic 30 minutes was controlled by the gentleman from Minnesota, 
and he made some remarks against the fact that we were successful in 
repealing ObamaCare. And I think Dr. Bucshon would like to comment on 
some of those points that were made.
  At this time, I proudly yield to our new member, Dr. Larry Bucshon.
  Mr. BUCSHON. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey, for allowing me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I was proud to vote for the repeal bill of health care 
today because, as a practicing physician for 15 years, I know that the 
government approach to health care reform is the wrong approach. It was 
said earlier tonight: Why aren't Republicans focusing on jobs? I would 
hold, Mr. Speaker, that this is a jobs bill today. The health care 
bill, the ObamaCare bill, is a job destroyer. I held roundtables for 
large and small businesses throughout my district, and I never heard 
any of the things I heard earlier tonight in this Chamber. What I heard 
is it is preventing them from expanding business; it is preventing them 
from starting new businesses, and some businesses are very worried that 
they may no longer be in business. So this is a jobs bill.
  The other thing I would like to comment on is the physicians' support 
for this bill. It was said earlier tonight in this Chamber that 
physicians across the country support this bill. Well, the 
organizations that have been discussed, the last time I looked, 
represent less than 20 percent of the physicians in the United States. 
In actual fact, most national special medical societies were against 
the bill. So this is a gross overrepresentation of national physicians' 
support for the ObamaCare bill.
  The President had a group of physicians at the White House in white 
coats saying that physicians are behind this bill, but he brought in a 
group of physicians who are known people who are proponents of single 
payer health care.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say again that this is a jobs bill. 
This will hurt jobs in America.
  The last thing I would like to say related to being a physician: What 
are we going to do about physician shortages in this country? This bill 
is going to make that worse. How can we convince young people, like my 
son who is a senior in high school, to go into medicine when they are 
looking at no significant financial way to become a primary care doctor 
in this country going forward with this ObamaCare in place?
  I want young people to love medicine, to go into medicine, to keep us 
in strong supply of physicians. But, Mr. Speaker, unless we do repeal 
this bill and replace it with things that we know that work as a 
private sector solution, that is not going to happen.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his 
comments.
  Before I yield again to my cochair, Dr. Murphy, I want to make a few 
comments in regard to some of the things that were said on the 
Democratic side of the aisle just within the last 30 minutes. The 
gentleman that spoke is a fine, fine Member, has a great heart and a 
lot of compassion and is a friend of mine and I don't refute him in any 
way of being strident or any animosity toward him, but the gentleman 
made a comment about why not give the law a chance, I think is sort of 
the way it was put, Mr. Speaker. The Republican majority, the new 
Republican majority wanted to come along with H.R. 2 and repeal the 
bill, didn't even want to give it a chance to see how well it might 
work.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just say on a point like that, we on this floor 
right now on the Republican side of the aisle, we doctors know that 
when you discover a cancer, you don't give it a chance to grow. You 
don't give it a chance to metastasize. You cut that sucker out and you 
get rid of it lock, stock and barrel. As our colleague from Iowa, Steve 
King, said the other day, you pull it out by the roots. I think, Mr. 
Speaker, the Speaker, John Boehner, said the same thing. We feel very 
strongly that today we did the right thing.
  I have a number of other charts here that my colleagues might want to 
reference in regard to specifics about what we feel about this bill and 
why we needed to repeal it and basically start over.
  I will finally quickly say that I heard the other side talk about 
statistics, saying that only 18 percent of people wanted the bill 
completely repealed. That is not an accurate statistic. Eighteen 
percent wanted to leave it like it is. Fully 75 percent in the 
latest Rasmussen poll either wanted it to be repealed or repealed and 
replaced. Or if not repealed, significantly altered. And, of course, 
that is what we are about as we go forward.

  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Dr. Murphy).
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Another couple of brief points I would 
like to bring up, because out of a sense of compassion, we want to 
continue to practice health care and we want patients to be able to 
afford it. But let me point out a couple of ways this bill is trying to 
fund the expanded government-run health care that actually increases 
cost.
  One is that the very thing that we should be working on to reduce 
costs such as medical supplies and other practices will be taxed. 
Pacemakers will be taxed. Heart monitors will be taxed. Artificial 
joints will be taxed. The knees and hips that people will have replaced 
will be taxed. Stents, diabetes supplies, and prescription drugs are 
going to be taxed. That tax is an increase in the cost of health care 
and something that has to be paid for, which gets paid for by 
increasing the cost of insurance.
  Employers also have to pay increasing taxes: if they don't have 
enough insurance or if they have no insurance for their employees. And 
if they have too much insurance for their employees, instead of 
rewarding them and saying this is good that you are providing 
comprehensive insurance for employees, that gets taxed as well. And 
employees themselves, if they are not covered, they have to pay taxes 
or, because the way this bill works because there is no time frame, 
they can get it when they are in the ambulance on the way to the 
hospital.
  Another point. Part of the funding for this is to take $70 billion 
from a long-term health insurance plan called the Community Living 
Assistance Services, which is the CLASS Act. Before it even starts, 
they will take $70 billion out of this over 10 years; but what happens 
is the premiums will need to be paid in actual claims. Actually, it is 
far less than will be needed.
  Now, if any of us tried to start an insurance plan and took all of 
the money out before it even got started, well, you wouldn't be able to 
get a license to provide that insurance. It is one of the many flaws in 
this program that does not have the money to pay for it. It is another 
reason why the bill had to be repealed before it is replaced.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I realize our time is running short, and I 
want to make a couple of points before yielding to Dr. Broun for a 
final comment.
  Republican doctors can help the repeal-replace effort, and I have 
four bullet points that I want to point out to my colleagues.
  Number one, health insurance reforms: Yes, but without government 
health plans.
  Number two, guaranteed access to insurance: Yes, but without an 
individual unconstitutional mandate.
  Number three, reduce the cost of health care: Yes, but without 
gutting Medicare, especially the Medicare Advantage program and taking 
something like $130 billion out of that program. And I think it was 
pointed out earlier that 20 percent of Medicare recipients are on 
Medicare Advantage, or at least they were.
  And number four, medical liability reform, and I will have a bill 
addressing that issue.
  Let me turn to my colleague from Georgia for a final comment.

[[Page H350]]

  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. We hear from our Democratic colleagues that the 
budget deficit is going to be increased by repealing ObamaCare, but 
that is just simply not true. The Democrats have used some faulty 
accounting techniques, deceptive accounting techniques, to show that. 
The actual cost if we keep ObamaCare over the next 10 years, it is 
going to increase the deficit by over $700 billion. If we keep it. We 
cannot afford it. States cannot afford it. They are already suffering. 
My home State of Georgia has a $2 billion deficit, and the increase of 
Medicaid premiums that will be forced on States all over this country, 
they cannot afford to continue to do that.
  We can lower the cost of health care. We can maintain good quality 
health care that is patient centered so patients can make their own 
decisions with their doctor. That is exactly the kind of health care 
system that we are going to bring forth to this House. We are going to 
repeal ObamaCare and we are going to continue to fight if it takes all 
of the way through the 2012 elections so that we get, hopefully, a 
President who will sign a repeal and replace bill. And then we will get 
through the Senate. So we will continue to fight for that.
  I yield back to Dr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Just a few closing remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Dr. Gosar and Dr. Bucshon for being with 
us tonight.
  You know, we didn't have time to go into all of the details that we 
would like to have gone into, but one thing that is absolutely clear is 
that Governors across this country--and not just Republican Governors 
but Democratic Governors as well--are very, very concerned with the 
Medicaid mandates and the fact that this maintenance of effort 
requirement that says that Governors who can't even be innovative and 
creative in running their own Medicaid programs is resulting in budget-
busting in all of these States that have to balance their budgets. 
Unfortunately, we don't do that up here. They're having to cut 
education to the bone, and they're having to cut public safety to the 
bone because of the massive increasing costs of Medicaid.
  Well, we thank the Speaker for the time, and we appreciate the 
opportunity to speak to the American people. We will be back here 
tomorrow to pass House Resolution Number 9 so that we can get busy on 
replacing ObamaCare.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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