[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13006-13007]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         PATIENT PROTECTION ACT

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will take a couple of minutes, 
actually, to speak on our time. I want to make a connection between 
what my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, was saying about 
the mix of money and politics and all the ways in which big money 
undercuts representative democracy. I want to make a connection to a 
piece of legislation that we are trying to get out here on the floor, 
which is the Patient Protection Act. I say to my colleague from 
Wisconsin, who is calling the payroll, one of the things I want to do 
is maybe just come to the floor and present some data about 
contributions that come from parties on all sides of this question. But 
from my point of view, you have a health insurance industry that sort 
of really basically has made the effort to keep universal health care 
coverage and, for that matter, basic protection of patients, consumer 
protection, off of the agenda. I think it is our responsibility to put 
it back on the agenda.
  I think we have reached a point in our country where the pendulum has 
swung too far in the direction of increasingly ``corporatized'' 
medicine, and it has become corporatized, bureaucratized. You have 
basically a few large insurance companies that own and control the 
majority of the managed care plans and, as a result of that, the 
consumers and the patients wonder where we fit in.
  There are a series of Senators on the Democratic side--I certainly 
hope there will be an equal number on the Republican side--that are 
committed to bringing patient protection legislation to the floor. Some 
of my colleagues, such as Senators Durbin, Kennedy, I think Boxer, and 
certainly Senator Daschle have introduced a bill, and we were all 
speaking about this last night. We want to talk about ways in which 
there can be sensible consumer protection.
  That is really what the issue is: Making sure our caregivers--our 
doctors and our nurses--are able to make decisions about the care we 
need as opposed to having the insurance industry decide; making sure 
you have a medicine that is not a monopoly medicine with the bottom 
line as the only line; making sure people don't find themselves, as 
employers shift from one plan to another, no longer able to take their 
child to a trusted family doctor; making sure families with children 
with illnesses are able to have access to the kind of specialty care 
that is the best care for their children; making sure there is an 
ombudsman program available so that advocates who are there, to whom 
people can go, do know what their rights are; making sure that when we 
have an external review process of the kind of decisions that are made, 
people have a place to make an appeal and they know the decision will 
be a fair decision--making sure, in other words, that we are able to 
obtain the best care for our families.
  As I travel around Minnesota--and around the country, for that 
matter--I find it astounding the number of people, the number of 
families, that fall between the cracks. The number of people--even if 
you are old enough for Medicare, it is not comprehensive. Seniors from 
Minnesota can't afford the prescription drug costs. It does nothing 
about catastrophic expenses at the end of your life. If you are ill and 
you have to be in a nursing home, almost everything you make is 
basically going to be taken away; there will be nothing left.
  That is one of the things that strikes terror in the hearts of 
elderly people--or people aren't poor enough for medical assistance, 
which is by no means comprehensive enough; or people aren't lucky 
enough to be working for an employer that can provide them with good 
coverage.
  To boot, what happens right now is that people who have the coverage 
find that with this medicine that we have, it is just going so far in 
the direction of becoming a bottom-line medicine that consumers are 
basically left in the dust.
  We want to have some sensible protection for consumers. We want to 
bring it to the floor of the Senate. And we want to have a debate on 
this legislation.
  The majority party--the Republican Party--leadership has taken to the 
situation that they want to be able to sign off on amendments we 
introduce. But that is not the way it works. It not a question of some 
Senators telling other Senators what amendments are the right 
amendments to introduce. We should have the full-scale debate. We 
should be able to come out here with amendments. We should be able to 
come out here with amendments that provide consumers with more rights 
to make sure that people have access to the care they need; to make 
sure the decisions are made by qualified providers; to make sure the 
bottom line is not the only line; to make sure this is not an 
insensitive medical system; to make sure that people do not go without 
the kind of care they need. We want to do that.
  We are committed to making this fight, and, if necessary, I think 
what you are going to see happen over the next week and beyond is that 
we are going to, one way or another, have a debate about this 
critically important issue.
  As long as I am talking about health care, I would like to say also 
that I think the other central issue is the way in which the insurance 
industry is taking universal health care coverage off the table. We 
need to put it back on the table. I can't think of an issue that is 
more important to families in our country.
  Mr. President, might I ask how much time we have left?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has exceeded his time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience. I ask 
unanimous consent, without anybody on the floor, that I be allowed an 
additional 10 minutes to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, this is a real pleasure, because one of the problems 
we have

[[Page 13007]]

had out here on the floor of the Senate is not enough time to be able 
to focus on issues that are terribly important, that we really believe 
ought to be part of this debate and part of the discussion.
  As long as I see the Chair, the Senator from Ohio, presiding, I would 
like to thank him for what I think is really his focus, or at least 
part of his work, which is the importance of what we do in making sure 
that, even before kindergarten, we do well by our children.
  I would really like to say before the Senate that I hope we will get 
back soon to a focus on the family issue. I don't think it is all, I 
say to the Presiding Officer, Government policy. But I do think it is a 
combination of public sector and private sector and community volunteer 
work. It should be a marriage made in Heaven, where we really bring 
people together and we as a nation achieve the following goal. To me, 
this is the most important goal. I think this should be the central 
goal of the public policy of the Senate and the House of 
Representatives. I think this is where the Federal Government can 
matter, where we can be a real player: It is pre-K.
  We ought to make it our goal that every child prekindergarten--she 
knows the alphabet, he knows colors and shapes and sizes; she knows how 
to spell her name; he knows his telephone number; and each and every 
one of them has been read to live; and each and every one of the 
children in our country comes to kindergarten and has that readiness to 
learn--they have, I say to the Presiding Officer, that spark of 
learning that he saw as Governor when he visited elementary school; 
they have that.
  There are just too many children who, by kindergarten, are way 
behind, and they fall further behind, and then they run into 
difficulty.
  I just want to say I really am disappointed that, in spite of all the 
studies, in spite of all the reports, in spite of a White House 
conference, in spite of all of the media coverage--and to a certain 
extent there is a part of me with some anger that says maybe in spite 
of the hype--that we have not centered our attention on what it is we 
could do here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives to 
enrich the lives of children in our country, to make sure that somehow 
we can renew our national vow of equal opportunity for every child. 
From my point of view, I think there is probably no more important 
focus.
  If I were to think about the kind of issues we talk about all the 
time--solvency for Social Security; where are we going to be as a 
nation in 1050? Are we going to have a productive, high-moral, skilled 
workforce? What about Medicare expenses? How do we reduce violence in 
our communities, violence in homes, violence in schools, violence out 
in the neighborhood?--each and every time, I make the argument, the 
most important thing we could do would be to make an investment in the 
health and skills and intellect and character of our children. To me, 
that would start with pre-K.
  The tragedy of it all--it is a tragedy because we are talking about 
people's lives--is we have not focused on that agenda at all. We don't 
even have but about 50 percent of the kids who qualify for Head Start 
receiving assistance; and, if it is early Head Start, pre-3-year-olds. 
I think it is naive. It is just a couple of percentage points. I don't 
think it is even 10 percent. If you move beyond low-income and you look 
at working families, we are lucky if 20 percent of the families that 
could use some assistance, some investment that would help them find 
good child care for their children, get any assistance at all. And 
then, if you move beyond that and you talk about the wages of child 
care workers, who do the most important work, it is deplorable the kind 
of wages we pay.
  On the floor of the Senate, I argue that this ought to be our 
priority. I argue that it doesn't--it cannot make us comfortable that 
at the same time the economy is humming along, we have about one out of 
every four children under the age of three growing up poor, and about 
one out of every two children of color under the age of three growing 
up poor in our country. We ought to make that a big part of our 
agenda--children's education, health care coverage, patient protection 
rights, universal health care coverage.
  Finally, I will finish by going back to what Senator Feingold said.
  I will make sure he is not lonely and out here alone. I will help him 
call that bankroll, because we ought to put reform right at the top of 
our agenda.
  We ought to talk about the mix of money and politics. We ought to 
talk about the ways in which big money dominates politics. We ought to 
understand the fact that the reason people have become disillusioned 
with politics is not because they don't care about the issues that are 
important to their lives. People care deeply and desperately about 
being able to earn a decent living, giving their children the care they 
deserve and need, about livable communities, and about being able to do 
well by their kids. People care about all those issues and more. They 
care deeply and desperately.
  However, they also believe that their concerns are of little concern 
in the Nation's Capitol, where politics is so dominated by the big 
money, by the investors, by the givers, by the heavy hitters. They 
believe if you pay, you play; and if you don't pay, you don't play.
  We ought to make reform and the way money has turned elections into 
auctions and severely undercutting representative democracy, where each 
and every man and woman should count as one and no more than one--that 
is not the case--we ought to make that the central issue.
  I heard Senators Feingold, Durbin, Boxer, Kennedy and Senator Daschle 
speaking. We intend to bring these issues to the floor, along with one 
other issue that is near and dear to my heart: That is what has now 
become an economic tragedy--family farmers are being driven off the 
land. When will they get a fair price? When will they have a fair and 
open market? When do we take action against the conglomerates that 
basically dominate the market? When do we take antitrust action?
  I heard my colleague talking about Senator LaFollette. When do we 
take on the economic interests? When will we be there on the side of 
children, on the side of education, on the side of decent health care, 
on the side of reform, on the side of working people, on the side of 
producers?
  We ought to be there. All these issues are interrelated. These are 
the issues that we will insist be part of the agenda of this Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). The Senator from Missouri.

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