[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 152 (Tuesday, October 29, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H6833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, over the past few weeks, it has become 
obvious that we are watching nothing less than the collapse of the 
American health care system. Millions of Americans are losing their 
health plans and set adrift into a dysfunctional system where they 
cannot find comparable affordable policies.
  Few are signing up on the ObamaCare exchanges. How few, we don't 
know. Because the numbers are so embarrassing, the administration 
refuses to report them. There are published reports that some 80 
percent of the signups are pushed into the Medicaid system, which is 
itself nearing functional collapse as doctors simply opt out. Those who 
are able to keep their health plans are seeing their rates skyrocket to 
unaffordable extremes. Those few who can find affordable policies often 
discover they are losing their doctors.

                              {time}  1015

  Many employers are dropping their employee health plans or reducing 
salaries or cutting back on work hours or laying off workers while 
trying to cope with increased costs. A constituent of mine reports her 
employer cut her salary 23 percent as it tries to cope with ObamaCare 
costs.
  The ObamaCare Web site is a monument to governmental incompetence. 
This is a Web site designed to sell a single product that has been 
under development for more than 3 years at a taxpayer cost of more than 
$600 million--more than was spent developing Facebook or Twitter--and 
it does not work.
  But that is not the big problem.
  The big problem is that, today, there are fewer people with health 
insurance--apparently, a lot fewer than before this program began less 
than 1 month ago. This is the disaster that Republicans tried to 
prevent or at least to delay, but that disaster is now unfolding before 
our eyes with dire consequences for millions of Americans.
  With all its flaws, the American health care system was the finest in 
the world. It was the most innovative, the most advanced, the most 
adaptable, and the most responsive to the individual needs of patients, 
and now we are losing it.
  The one question I keep hearing is: Well, what do the Republicans 
propose?
  In fact, Republicans have had a comprehensive alternative for years. 
Spearheaded by Dr. Tom Price of Georgia and Dr. Phil Roe of Tennessee 
and sponsored by the Republican Study Committee, this package would 
bring within the reach of all Americans health plans that they could 
choose according to their own individual needs of their own families, 
that they could own and that they could control, but this package has 
never passed the House, and it is high time that it did.
  It extends the same tax breaks we currently give to companies to 
employees so they can afford to buy their own health care, again, 
according to their own needs.
  It expands Health Savings Accounts so people can meet their needs 
with pretax income.
  It restores to people the freedom to shop across State lines to find 
the best policies to suit their needs.
  It restores flexibility so that health plans can accommodate people 
with preexisting conditions while expanding risk pools to provide for 
those conditions.
  It attacks cost drivers like medical liability law that are making 
health care unaffordable.
  It restores pricing flexibility to plans so that a healthy young 
person can again purchase catastrophic insurance for next to nothing.
  It takes the best of the American health care system, preserves it, 
and corrects its flaws.
  Now, I realize the Senate is likely to bury this reform as it has so 
many, but it is important that the House pass it so the American people 
can see that there is still hope to save what was once the finest 
health care system in the world and that it can be again as soon as 
this fever dream of ObamaCare finally breaks.
  We have just been through a government shutdown because Democrats 
refused to even consider delaying the ObamaCare train wreck. They got 
their way, and that train wreck is now upon us. I believe, in coming 
months, the American people will recognize the urgent warnings that the 
Republicans tried so desperately to convey, and they will be looking 
for a way out. We need to blaze that trail now.
  For that reason, I ask the House leadership to bring the Republican 
health care reforms to the floor, to get them to the Senate, and then 
let the American people decide.
  Mr. Speaker, freedom works. It is time we put it back to work.

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