[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S31-S32]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Tax Reform Bill and Healthcare

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, when we were debating the tax relief 
law--the tax reduction law, the tax cut law--Republicans predicted that 
it would be very good for the people of our country. Democrats like 
Nancy Pelosi predicted that it would be ``Armageddon.'' She said it 
would be the ``end of the world.'' Well, that was just last month, and 
it is already very clear to me that we have won the argument. People 
across the country are seeing the benefits. Thanks to this Republican 
tax relief law, Nancy Pelosi is seeing that hard-working Americans have 
actually won as a result of this law being passed.
  Businesses around the country have begun turning those tax cuts into 
higher wages for many workers. Almost every day there is another 
business announcement about bonuses of more than $1,000 for workers. We 
are seeing it for hundreds of thousands of workers at businesses all 
across the country. They are raising wages and also investing millions 
of dollars back into the workers who make the companies so productive 
for our country.
  Democrats are just wrong about tax reform. I am hearing it at home as 
I visit with people and stop in the drugstore and the grocery store 
around the State of Wyoming. They are saying: Look, anybody who does 
the math sees that it is a good deal for them. It doubled the standard 
deduction, lowered the rates, and raised the child tax credit. All of 
these things have been very, very helpful, certainly, to people in my 
State of Wyoming.
  It is interesting listening to Democrats because they think they have 
great ideas, and they are just proven wrong about the facts. One of the 
ones I want to talk about today is something that the Senator from 
Vermont has been talking about with regard to healthcare. He has 
essentially wanted to scrap the U.S. healthcare system and replace it 
with a government-run system.
  As he said, the current system under ObamaCare is the most 
bureaucratic, inefficient, and expensive system in the world. He often 
points to a single-payer system--sort of what they have right now in 
Great Britain. Of course, who would be paying for that? That would be 
the American taxpayers dealing with the incredible expenses of a 
program like that.
  I want to point out what is actually happening today in Great 
Britain, in the system that the Senator from Vermont--the father of an 
American single-payer plan, one that a number of Democrats have signed 
on to--where the authorities in Great Britain just told hospitals to 
cancel 50,000 operations in January and to put them off until next 
month because they are just too busy doing other things. So scheduled 
operations were canceled. Now, these are surgeries for things like 
cataracts, knee replacements, and hip replacements.
  Facilities are turning away all but the most urgent cases in need of 
care. They are closing outpatient clinics. Why? Because it is winter, 
and it is flu season, and the British healthcare system, based on a 
single-payer, taxpayer-run system, is not prepared to deal with the 
needs of the people of that country.
  So hospitals across the country of Great Britain have canceled 
surgeries that have been planned and for which people had decided to 
take off time from work to have done according to their schedules. 
Forget it; they have been delayed.
  One doctor in England actually said that they are seeing, in his 
words, ``third-world conditions''--third world conditions, describing 
the British healthcare system today. This was an

[[Page S32]]

Army doctor who did three tours at a field hospital in Afghanistan, 
somebody who knows what third-world conditions are truly like.
  An article in the British newspaper the Guardian, out yesterday, 
said: ``Hospitals are reporting growing chaos''--growing chaos--``with 
a spike in winter flu leaving frail patients facing 12-hour waits, and 
some units are running out of corridor space''--corridor space.
  Now, that is what the situation is like in British hospitals right 
now, today. It turns out it happened before in Great Britain. Last 
winter, they had a similar problem with too many sick people and not 
enough options for care. Back then, the British Red Cross called the 
situation a ``humanitarian crisis.''
  In today's New York Times--this morning's edition, page 9--talking 
about the British healthcare system and the problems with it, the chief 
executive of the National Health Service in England, Simon Stevens, in 
a speech to Parliament, recently said: ``The N.H.S. waiting list will 
grow to five million people'' coming down the line--grow to 5 million 
people. How would the American people like to be one of 5 million 
people waiting to get an appointment, waiting for an operation, in the 
waiting line? That is what Senator Sanders and the Democrats who 
propose this government-run system are talking about for our country.
  The scenes unfolding across hospitals in Britain--and I will describe 
one that is outline and written about today in the New York Times. It 
says:

       Tuesday night, the emergency ward at Kingston Hospital in 
     southwestern London looked more like an airport lounge than a 
     hospital, with patients sprawled out in the waiting room.
       ``There's no real system or order; it's a jungle in here,'' 
     said Nancy Harper, who had accompanied her 87-year-old 
     grandmother, who was lying down and complaining of 
     excruciating pain in her lower back.
       ``It's been more than five hours,'' Ms. Harper said. ``We 
     get to the front of the queue and then someone more ill comes 
     in and we get pushed back. It's outrageous.''

  That is the healthcare system our Democratic colleagues are promoting 
for the United States--government-run, the government deciding, 
government rationing care.
  The system in Great Britain is strained under normal conditions, even 
when it is not flu season. There is no margin for error. When something 
as routine as winter hits, the healthcare system goes completely off 
the rails. Is that the kind of chaos Democrats in Washington want for 
the United States of America? Do they want third-world conditions in 
hospitals; frail and elderly patients waiting 12 hours in a hallway 
just to get care; people getting a call telling them that the surgery 
they have been planning for--and maybe they have family members coming 
to take care of other things around the home or to take care of 
Grandmom--has to be put off, that they will have to wait until next 
month? Fifty thousand people will be receiving that call in Britain 
this month.
  When the government controls healthcare, it always ends up rationing 
care. When the bills start adding up, so do the delays. That is what 
happens everywhere in the world when they try a single-payer scheme. 
They get long lines of people waiting for care and care being denied.
  Senator Sanders put out the same plan a couple of years ago. It is 
interesting because one of the most liberal columnists at the New York 
Times--the newspaper that ran this story today about the British 
healthcare system--said that this single-payer plan would lead to 
rationing. Well, it does. The article went on to say that in order to 
keep the costs down, Washington would have to ``say no to patients, 
telling them that they can't always have the treatment they want.'' 
That is the side of the story the Democrats will not talk about. The 
author of that editorial, the columnist at the New York Times, said 
that Senator Sanders ``isn't coming clean on that.'' The Democrats 
aren't coming clean on that. That is what happens in a single-payer 
system. Democrats who are pushing for a Washington takeover of 
Americans' healthcare are still not coming clean about the rationing of 
care that it would cause.
  Republicans think patients and doctors should be the ones making 
those decisions, not government bureaucrats. Democrats who want to pass 
this new litmus test--and it is a litmus test for the liberal left--say 
Washington should make decisions for us. I disagree. They say that you 
are going to get what the government gives you. To me and to the 
American people, that is not what the American people want.
  As a doctor who has taken care of patients for 25 years in Wyoming, 
patients want the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower 
costs. That is the goal--not single-payer, government-run healthcare. 
Parents need to be able to be involved with the doctor, hospital, and 
their child in terms of what is best for that child, not the government 
coming in and making the decisions. Seniors ought to be able to decide, 
along with their doctor, whether it is time for a new hip or a new 
knee, not the government saying: We are only going to pay this many 
this year and that is it. And if you are not done this year, get in 
line for next year. And when next year comes in January, 50,000 
operations push them back another month.
  It is unfortunate, what we see is happening with the British 
healthcare system for the patients there, the doctors, the nurses, the 
shortages, all of the issues they have there. The issue is, do we want 
that for our country? We do not.
  I started this by talking about Nancy Pelosi calling the tax relief 
reduction bill Armageddon and the worst thing in the world. She was 
wrong on that. Senator Sanders is wrong about his claims that a one-
size-fits-all, government-paid, national healthcare plan that all of 
the American people would be under, government control, no individual 
choice, no patient control, not working with their doctors in their 
communities--I believe that would be wrong for America, and I believe 
that the Democrats who are supporting that and proposing that have a 
different view of America than certainly the people of Wyoming.
  I think what is happening in England is a mistake and would be a 
mistake for the United States. It is not something the American people 
want or will, I believe, ever tolerate
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FLAKE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.