[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19408]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to talk a little about Iraq. Before 
that, I have a responsibility to respond to the majority leader's 
comments on health care today. Sometimes you hear things on the Senate 
floor and you have to stop and say, did I really hear that or is that 
just something I thought?
  I was really listening to the Republican leader talk about Republican 
support for health care--meaningful health care. Listening to the 
Republican leader talk about Republican support for meaningful health 
care is like listening to the big tobacco companies talk about the need 
for cancer research. How do I say that? Because the problems of cancer 
basically are caused by the big tobacco companies. The problem that we 
don't have a meaningful health care system in America today--people-
based, patient-based, preventive care-based--is because of Republican 
Party policies.
  It has been very clear for a long time that the Republican Party has 
opposed any kind of meaningful people-based health care program. After 
all, it was our colleague, former Senator Robert Dole, who during his 
Presidential campaign in 1996 bragged he had voted against Medicare, as 
most Republicans did in the mid 1960s. Now, again, the majority leader 
says that the elderly are not signing up for these discount cards and 
we ought to be promoting them, sort of like a cheerleader. Maybe they 
are all taking their cue from the fact that President Bush was a 
cheerleader in college, so now we have to be a cheerleader. We heard 
that we have to cheerlead, regardless of what the facts are. There is a 
reason the elderly are not signing up for this card. It is meaningless. 
It doesn't do anything for them. Yet we are supposed to go out and be a 
cheerleader for them?
  Well, the Republicans rammed through their health care program. The 
elderly get a meaningless card, and the pharmaceutical companies got 
$12 billion in payments to entice them into this program. How about 
giving the elderly in our country $12 billion?
  I sum it up by saying that President Bush does have--I want to be 
fair to him--a health care plan. It is very simple and straightforward: 
Pray you don't get sick. That is President Bush's health care plan.
  John Kerry has a sound health care plan: One, to overturn the ban on 
Medicare bidding down the prices from pharmaceutical companies. Again, 
that was in our last Medicare bill. Republicans insisted on it. They 
pushed it through. Right now, Medicare cannot bargain with the large 
pharmaceutical companies to bid down the prices. Why? Because they are 
paying in the bill and they are forbidden to do so. What kind of sense 
does that make? The Veterans' Administration can bargain down the price 
of drugs with pharmaceutical companies but not Medicare. That makes no 
sense.
  One of the first things a President Kerry would do is get rid of that 
ban and let Medicare get the price of drugs down for the elderly.
  Secondly, a President Kerry will say we have to allow for the 
reimportation of drugs from Canada. We have a free-trade agreement with 
them on cars, clothes, pens, ties, and everything else, except for one 
thing--drugs. Well, it is time we have a free-trade agreement on drugs 
and let us reimport drugs from Canada.
  The third part of the Kerry program is to provide a tax credit for 
small businesses--up to 50 percent--so they can carry a health care 
policy on their workers. That is so important for us in rural America, 
where most of our people work for small business.
  Fourth, Senator Kerry says we ought to open the Federal Employee 
Health Benefit Program to everybody in America. That is a good program. 
It allows you to pick your doctor and hospital, and it allows you to 
change your plan if you would like to do so. It is a great program. I 
ought to know, I am in it. So is President Bush. So is Vice President 
Cheney. So is every Senator on this floor. If it is good enough for us, 
it ought to be good enough for the American people.
  The last thing in the Kerry program for health care is to double the 
National Health Service Corps to get more doctors, physicians' 
assistants, nurse practitioners, and others serving in our rural and 
underserved areas and to increase the number of community health 
centers in America.
  So while I am proud John Kerry has a forward-looking, comprehensive 
health care plan that will be meaningful, that will reduce drug prices, 
and that will get affordable, reliable health care to the American 
people, President Bush is silent. Again, President Bush's health care 
plan is simple: Pray you don't get sick. That is not enough. We need 
better than that.

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