[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 141 (Wednesday, September 21, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6337-H6340]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         MEDICARE AND OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank our 
majority leader for giving me the opportunity to take this time this 
evening to talk about two of the most important issues on the minds of 
every American, but especially on the minds of our seniors, and those 
two issues are, number one, Medicare, and, number two, the Patient 
Protection and Affordable Care Act.
  Now, if you go to the 11th Congressional District of Georgia, Madam 
Speaker, and you say, what do you think about the Patient Protection 
and Affordable Care Act that was passed on March 23, 2010--1\1/2\ years 
ago--in this body, they would say I don't know what you're talking 
about. What is PPACA, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? 
And then if you said to the folks in the 11th of Georgia, well, 
ObamaCare, they would say yes, of course, now I know what you're 
talking about. So tonight I will use the term ``ObamaCare''--not in a 
pejorative way, but it's the term that's most recognizable to the 
American people.
  Of course even today, 1\1/2\ years after passage of ObamaCare, fully 
60 percent of people across this country are opposed to it. They were 
opposed to it at its inception; and yet when President Obama was 
inaugurated and became our 44th President, just within weeks there was 
this push to have something that I would call national health insurance 
or government-controlled health insurance for this great country of 
ours.
  Many times, Madam Speaker, the dialogue was, well, we have been 
wanting this government-controlled health insurance, national health 
insurance, Medicare-for-all government insurance from cradle to grave 
for years, way back in probably the days of Theodore Roosevelt. We have 
been wanting this and trying to get this passed, and now is our 
opportunity. Now finally we have the opportunity to bring this to the 
American people.
  Well, who was it, Madam Speaker, that wanted it all these years? And 
why, if they wanted it so badly for 50, 60, 70 years, why was it never 
passed? Indeed, why was it not passed the last time before this passage 
in March of 2010? Why did it fail back in 1993-94, during the 
administration of President Clinton, when we referred to it as 
HillaryCare? Everybody remembers that very well. Well, it's because the 
American people don't want this. They didn't want it then, didn't want 
it in 1993-94, absolutely didn't want it in March of 2010. And yet this 
President and that majority--at the time, the Democrats controlled this 
House of Representatives. They controlled the Senate. They had the 
White House.

                              {time}  1900

  All their ducks were in a row. Everything was aligned. And they 
literally spent a year and a half, Madam Speaker, a year and a half 
forcing that legislation, literally, down the throats of the American 
people, even when folks of all ages, but especially seniors, were 
saying, you know, We don't really want this.

[[Page H6338]]

  Part of that reason, especially in regard to our seniors, Madam 
Speaker, is the fact that they were worried, and still are worried, 
about their Medicare program. Medicare, of course, was an amendment to 
the Social Security Act that was passed back in 1965. I had just 
completed my freshman year of medical school, and I remember it very 
well. Medicare, of course, is a great program for our seniors. I would 
hate to think what our situations would be, those over 65 and those 
with disabilities, if it were not for the Medicare program.
  But, Madam Speaker, the Medicare program is far from secure. I'm sad 
to say that tonight, but it's the truth, and I think the American 
people, and again, especially our seniors who are currently on 
Medicare, or those that are getting close to age 65, I think they know 
that our attention in this Congress and from this administration should 
be on preserving, strengthening the Medicare program for our seniors 
and not spending a year and a half, from January 2009, literally, until 
March of 2010, with almost nothing on the agenda but instituting, 
passing this new entitlement program called PPACA, Patient Protection 
Affordable Care Act, or, indeed, ObamaCare, that really has nothing to 
do with seniors, has very little to do with those who are poor in this 
country, through no fault of their own, and thank goodness, again, 
created in 1965, their health care system called Medicaid.
  So, no, what we have done with ObamaCare, Madam Speaker and my 
colleagues, is just simply create a whole new entitlement program. I 
will make a little analogy and say that if, in the middle of a 
thunderstorm, you have a leaking roof on your house, you don't go out 
and add another room or a deck on the back of the house. You get up on 
that roof and you stop the leaking.
  It's a matter of priorities, Madam Speaker. It's a situation that is 
beyond my comprehension that the Democratic majority and President 
Obama would spend all that time and effort trying to add a new room, 
put a deck on the back of the house when the roof was badly leaking. 
And the analogy is, of course, that roof is the Medicare program.
  There's so many things that we need to do and we need to have the 
courage to do. I am very proud of my party, the current majority in 
this House of Representatives, when we passed our budget for fiscal 
year 2012, sometimes referred to as the Ryan budget. Paul Ryan, Madam 
Speaker, as you know, is our colleague that is the chairman of the 
Budget Committee. But it is a Republican budget, and it has the courage 
of conviction, the commitment to our senior citizens to say to them, We 
are going to fix the Medicare program and we're going to guarantee that 
it will be there for your children and your grandchildren and your 
great-grandchildren, and that the benefit program that you currently 
have and, indeed, even people who are not yet eligible for Medicare but 
they're 55 years old, 10 years away, we would enact no changes 
whatsoever to their Medicare benefits.
  Medicare as you know it will be preserved and protected for those 47 
million people who are currently on the Medicare program; maybe 7 
million of those are younger individuals who are permanently disabled. 
Forty-seven million people currently on Medicare. When you add those 
who, today, men and women in this country who are 55 years of age or 
older but not yet 65, in 10 years, Madam Speaker, that will be another 
20 to 25 million people on the Medicare program with absolutely no 
changes. You're talking about 65 or 70 million people 10 years from now 
who will be on Medicare, traditional Medicare as we know it, for the 
rest of their natural lives, and I hope every one of them, including 
myself, lives to be 93 years old like my mom is today and enjoying the 
benefits and the security of Medicare.
  Again, we diverted our attention away from a program that our seniors 
can't live without but that's in danger of becoming insolvent. And 
that's not Congressman Phil Gingrey, Dr. Gingrey, the chairman of the 
GOP House Doctors Caucus speaking, although I do represent, Madam 
Speaker, that group here tonight as the designee for the Republican 
majority in this hour of time that is allotted to me. No, this is the 
trustees of Medicare and the Congressional Budget Office and the 
actuary of CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who every 
year they look at the sustainability of the program. And what they have 
told us, Members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, in both 
bodies, we know very clearly that the best case scenario if we do 
nothing is that Medicare will be insolvent. We're talking now about the 
Hospital Trust Fund. It will be insolvent by the year 2024. Maybe it's 
worse than that, maybe by the year 2020.
  For us to ignore that, just using the expression, Madam Speaker, 
whistling past the graveyard, pretending something doesn't exist that's 
as obvious as the nose on your face, kicking the can down the road 
thinking, well, gee, you know, all I really care about is getting 
reelected and let somebody else deal with the problems, unconscionable 
on our part.
  And to suggest that this new program to cover those in the country, I 
don't know how many, 20 million people maybe, that are not poor enough 
for the Medicaid program and not old enough or disabled enough for the 
Medicare program, let's create yet another entitlement program. If 
money grew on trees, that might not be a bad philosophy, but it 
doesn't. It doesn't. If it did, we wouldn't be in debt $14.9 trillion, 
soon to be $15.5 trillion. We just can't do everything, and we have to 
set our priorities and focus on what is the right thing, what is the 
most important thing.
  I say to my colleagues tonight, Madam Speaker, during this time, that 
that most important thing is to strengthen, to preserve, to save our 
Medicare program for our current seniors and for our children and our 
grandchildren.

                              {time}  1910

  There's so many things in ObamaCare, this new program, this new 
entitlement program, to make sure that everybody has health insurance 
whether they really want to or not.
  There are so many things in this bill, which doesn't really fully go 
into effect until 2014, but yet the taxes that are burdening our 
citizens are already being applied, whether it's an addition to the 
payroll tax, taxing for the first time income that's not earned, income 
that's interest, income that's dividends, income that's rental income. 
If mom and pop happen to rent out a room in their basement, and they 
have income over a certain amount, the President says they're rich. 
Again, I used this word a few minutes ago, it's just unconscionable.
  When ObamaCare was created, one of the largest pay-fors in that 
program, Madam Speaker, was cuts to Medicare, something like $550 
billion taken out of the Medicare program--not to strengthen Medicare, 
not to pay for catastrophic coverage for our seniors, not to strengthen 
the prescription drug plan, part D, not to close the doughnut hole. No. 
That money was taken out of the program to pay for this new entitlement 
that most of us know as ObamaCare, or the Patient Protection and 
Unaffordable Care Act. In my opinion they should have called it that. 
That's what's hurting this country very badly right now.
  There are many things in ObamaCare that a lot of folks are not really 
aware of. They don't fully appreciate what is there because as Speaker 
Pelosi said, you're not going to know until you read it. She suggested 
that once you read it, you might like it. That certainly has not turned 
out to be the truth.
  Madam Speaker, I want to take an opportunity to go through a few 
slides. Here are some of the promises that were made as the ObamaCare 
law was developed.
  ``ObamaCare will reduce the deficit,'' Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa 
says of the Affordable Care Act, ``This historic legislation will 
reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next 10 years.''
  The next bullet point, colleagues, I know you can't see the small 
writing so I will read it to you: ObamaCare will create jobs and 
improve the United States economy. The White House claims that 
ObamaCare, and this is also a quote from Tim Geithner, the Treasury 
Secretary, ``helps businesses and the overall economy by eliminating 
hidden costs that currently contribute to higher health care premiums 
charged to businesses and the government.'' Tim Geithner, Secretary of 
the

[[Page H6339]]

Treasury, said that in a White House blog on January 19 of this year.
  Another quote from the President himself: The Patient Protection and 
Affordable Care Act ``will save a typical family up to $2,500 on 
premiums yearly.'' President Obama said that, of course, back in 2009. 
He also said, ``If you like your health plan, you can keep your health 
plan.''
  During the health reform debate, President Obama promised Americans 
that there is nothing in the new law that would force Americans to 
change plans or their doctor. Colleagues, do you remember that? Sure 
you do. Of course you do.
  Then the last bullet point on this slide, Madam Speaker: ObamaCare 
will not ration health care.
  Now, this is in reference to the provision that was added in the 
Senate creating something called the acronym IPAB, Independent Payment 
Advisory Board, kind of like MedPAC is an advisory board under current 
Medicare.
  But this creates this new board, and Secretary Sebelius said this on 
June 23, just a couple months ago, ``IPAB is expressly prohibited from 
making recommendations that ration care, raise premiums, reduce 
benefits, or change eligibility for Medicare.'' That's a quote from 
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
  Here, Madam Speaker, are the realities. Those were the promises. Here 
are the realities.
  Colleagues, please pay attention to this next poster because this is 
so important.
  ObamaCare will not reduce the deficit. According to a report by the 
House Budget Committee, there will be a $700 billion increase in the 
deficit in the first 10 years of ObamaCare.
  The second bullet point: ObamaCare will not create jobs nor will it 
improve our economy. According to testimony by the Director of the 
Congressional Budget Office, the American labor force will be reduced 
by 800,000 jobs due to ObamaCare provisions that will effectively 
increase marginal tax rates, which will also discourage work. That was 
the testimony of Doug Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional 
Budget Office. He was put in that position by Speaker Pelosi. And that 
was at a House Budget Committee hearing in February of this year, some 
6 months after the passage of ObamaCare.
  The third bullet: ObamaCare will not lower health care costs for 
families by $2,500 a year. The President was wrong about that. Due to 
ObamaCare, families buying insurance on their own can expect a $2,100 
increase in premiums. And that's from a letter from CBO to former 
Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, and that was in November of 
2009, some 5 months after passage of ObamaCare. I'm sorry. That was 
actually 6 months before. This is when the bill was being developed and 
debated in the Senate.
  If you like your health plan, you cannot keep your health plan. 
According to the United States Census Bureau, the 2010 census shows 
that employer-provided insurance fell by 1.5 million to 55.3 percent 
from 56.1 percent in 2009. And it is continuing to fall. It would not 
surprise me if within the next 6 to 8 years, Madam Speaker, that a 
hundred million workers in this country will lose their employer-
provided health insurance because the mandates of ObamaCare make it 
impossible to meet this requirement.
  It's not just a matter of being forced to provide the health care for 
their employees; it is the type of health insurance coverage dictated 
by the Federal Government. That's why, my colleagues, 60 percent of 
this country remains totally opposed to this.
  Finally on this poster, ObamaCare will ration health care. Don 
Berwick is the new director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 
Services, CMS. He had to be appointed by the President during a recess 
because he could not pass advise and consent and approval by the United 
States Senate.

                              {time}  1920

  They didn't have the votes. They didn't have all the Democratic 
votes, I feel quite confident.
  So the President used a little trick of the trade and put him in this 
position during a congressional recess. This is a gentleman who was 
quoted and who wrote about and talked about other national health 
insurance programs. In regard to rationing, here is what the Director 
of Medicare said, ``The decision is not whether or not we will ration 
care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.'' Don 
Berwick in Biotechnology Health Care, June 2009.
  Madam Speaker, as we talk about these two programs--Medicare on the 
one hand, ObamaCare on the other--I just think it's so important for us 
to understand what kind of costs we're talking about. This new 
entitlement program, it's not paid for. They tried to say that it was 
paid for, and raised $1 trillion by slashing and burning Medicare of 
$550 billion and by raising taxes for the other $500 billion, and said 
in the final analysis that this is paid for and that it saves money. 
Nothing could be further from the truth.
  This program is not paid for. It does not save money, and it is 
probably costing we the taxpayers $2.7 trillion. How can we afford to 
do that, to add that new room or to build that new deck when there are 
obligations that we have made to our seniors and our obligations that 
we have made--our promises, our commitment--to those who, through no 
fault of their own, are unemployed, who have little income or maybe no 
income? That hand up, of course, is the Medicaid program. It is just 
patently unconscionable for we as Members of this great Congress to 
ignore that.
  As our supercommittee now is debating what needs to be cut in our 
overall spending of $3.7 trillion every year--and 30 percent of that is 
borrowed--that's how you get to a debt of $15 trillion. If you borrow 
$1 trillion here and $1 trillion there for 3 or 4 years in a row and if 
you create a new entitlement program that costs another $2.7 trillion, 
you can get to $15 trillion worth of debt pretty darned quickly.
  So, to this bipartisan commission which has been set up to recommend 
additional cuts so that the President can have his request granted to 
increase the debt ceiling another $1.5 trillion so that he gets through 
the next election and so that this issue doesn't have to be addressed 
again, and as this bipartisan, bicameral commission of 12 Members 
debates where to find the offsetting cuts of $1.5 trillion, Madam 
Speaker, I would say, Hey, men and women. You're all very bright. You 
were selected by your respective parties and your respective leadership 
because of the respect all the Members have for you and for your work 
and experience in regard to dealing with these things.
  You've got the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the chairman 
of the Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the more senior members of 
the Financial Services Committee--and I'm referring to the Republicans 
on the committee. You have the ranking member of the Budget Committee 
on the Democratic side, and you have one of the highest leadership 
Members from South Carolina. You have good Democrats and good 
Republicans in this body and in the other body.
  I know they're struggling. I know they're struggling. I know the 
President just sent them a document, a 29-page document, asking for 
another $2 trillion worth of cuts. Hey, repeal ObamaCare, and you'll 
get $2.7 trillion of reduction in the debt. It is so simple, and it's 
what the American people want. It's what the American people want.
  Majority Leader Reid, pass the House-passed budget for fiscal year 
2012. I know the Senate hasn't passed a budget in 900 days--I 
understand that--but just don't keep down that path. It's like trying 
to tax your way out of debt. The President seems to think that that's 
the way to create jobs. You just tax the so-called ``rich,'' who 
actually are people who have an adjusted gross income of $200,000 a 
year. These are the job creators. These are the small business men and 
women who, by the way, pay their taxes as individuals.
  Colleagues, you know that, and you know that this is a lot about 
politics and that it's a lot about the next election; but we just need 
to take a deep breath and think about what the people back home are 
telling us. Think about the struggles that they're going through, those 
15 million without jobs--and 45 percent of them have been without jobs 
for more than 6 months. When you add the underemployed or the people 
who have just given up, you're probably talking about not 14, 15 
million; you're probably talking about 25 million people.

[[Page H6340]]

  I see it. I see it, colleagues, in town hall meetings, and I know you 
do, too--both Republicans and Democrats. People ask questions. They 
shake their fingers at you. They're just not going to take some little 
smoke and mirrors answer to these tough questions. They're fed up with 
that, and I don't blame them. That's why our approval rating is so poor 
in the Congress. We as individuals like to think ``they love me in my 
district.'' You'd better hope so, but maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe every 
one of us is at risk of joining the ranks of the unemployed.
  If we don't do the right thing, Madam Speaker, we deserve it. We 
deserve to be fired.
  I stand here tonight, hopefully not in a partisan way. I think my 
colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle would agree that my 
rhetoric is not over the top--maybe occasionally. Let's try to be 
honest with each other and work together and get things done and 
realize, when you've crammed a law like PPACA, the Patient Protection 
and Affordable Care Act, down the throats of the American people when 
60 percent or more say they don't want it, your first priority should 
be to create jobs and that your second priority and your third priority 
should be to create jobs and put America back to work and not spend a 
year and a half trying to pass something just because Democrats for 75 
years have wanted this program of government control over health care. 
I think it was so wrong-headed. It's even worse than the previous year 
when we spent the whole year trying to please Al Gore and pass this 
scheme of cap-and-tax--or cap-and-trade--in regard to carbon dioxide. 
In the process, it would literally have cost every family in this 
country $1,500 a year in increased utility bills.

                              {time}  1930

  That's what the Democratic majority did when they took over in 
January of 2007. For a year and a half, I can remember distinctly, 
Madam Speaker, I was on the Science Committee and the very first 
hearing we had, we had one witness. That was the new Speaker of the 
House, Nancy Pelosi, promoting cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax.
  And the next hearing we had, we had one witness. That was Al Gore, 
former Vice President, again, pushing for something that was a job 
killer, maybe not a job killer for him, maybe not a job killer for 
certain sectors, special interests in this country, but for John Q. 
Public, Joe the Plumber, an absolute killer to jobs and has done 
nothing but increase unemployment despite spending $850 billion on a 
stimulus bill that, if it created any jobs, they were government jobs.
  Then, in the default position, the Democratic majority says, oh, 
well, you know, if it hadn't been for this bill that we've passed, all 
this spending, a lot of jobs would have been lost. Well, that's easy to 
say, but how do you count that? How do you verify that? Trust but 
verify.
  Again, Madam Speaker, I am not going to take all of the designated 
hour this evening, but I am proud to have had the opportunity tonight 
to talk about these issues, yes, on behalf of the GOP House Doctors 
Caucus, as a member, health care providers, nurses, doctors, dentists, 
psychologists, people that have been there, that walk the walk in 
regard to what's best for our country and best for our citizens and, 
yes, best for our patients, not just seniors. I talked a lot about 
Medicare tonight and this PPACA, ObamaCare, but we need to let the 
marketplace work.
  Mr. President, we don't want, we didn't want, we never will want a 
U.K.-type system. We don't want national health insurance. We don't 
want bureaucrats coming between our health care providers and their 
patients.
  If we don't repeal ObamaCare, we are going to destroy medicine as we 
know it, not just Medicare and Medicaid as we know it, but health care 
as we know it. Colleagues, that's one-sixth of our economy today, and 
it will be growing each and every year.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________