[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9324-9325]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           PUTTING PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THEIR OWN HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity for the last 
hour to listen to some of the rhetoric coming from the other side. I 
will just have to say we have heard a lot of stuff on the floor of this 
House today about health care and medical liability insurance.
  My firm belief is we need choices and options for the uninsured. 
Unfortunately, the other side chooses to characterize that as a 
piecemeal approach, but I believe that is an approach that is working 
and will continue to work, if we will simply give it the chance to do 
so.
  There are fundamental differences between the Democrat side and the 
Republican side of this House. The Democrats believe that the 
government should be in charge of all health care and mete it out as 
they see fit.
  Mr. Speaker, I worked for over 20 years as a private practitioner, as 
a physician, back in Texas, and I will just tell you I cannot imagine 
giving up that control over that much of my life to the Federal 
Government. I would much rather see people own their health insurance, 
be in charge of their health care themselves. I believe if you put 
people in charge of their health care, they will ultimately make better 
health decisions, and they will certainly help keep the costs of 
delivery of health care down.
  One of the really painful things that I had to listen to over this 
past hour was discussion of the initiatives that were passed on this 
House floor today, particularly medical liability reform and the 
Association Health Plans. Yes, those are Republican initiatives, and a 
Republican House has passed both of those initiatives, well over a year 
ago in the case of medical liability insurance, and last June for 
Association Health Plans.
  But, unfortunately, 440 feet away from us, we cannot get that 
legislation taken up; not because our Republican colleagues are opposed 
to this legislation, but because of the arcane rules of the other body 
preventing that from even coming up to a vote on the other side. I 
think that is a shame.
  Mr. Speaker, when the President came and addressed us in the State of 
the Union Address in January, he outlined three proposals that would 
help reduce the number of uninsured in this country. Remind you this 
was back in January, this was four months ago, so time is a-wasting.
  What the President outlined, he said, ``We already did Health Saving 
Accounts in the Medicare Modernization Act that I just signed into law 
last month. What I think we ought to do now is provide a full 
deductible for a catastrophic health insurance plan, so that someone 
could purchase that with before-tax dollars and put those contributions 
for the deductible into their Medical Savings Account and build wealth 
with that.''
  Mr. Speaker, I had a Medical Savings Account myself for 5 years 
before I came to Congress, and I will just tell you, that is a powerful 
way to build wealth in a savings account dedicated to your health care 
needs.
  The President went on to talk about Association Health Plans. There 
is no aspect of Association Health Plans that involves cherry-picking. 
Far from it.

                              {time}  2230

  This allows a much larger group to capture the purchasing power of a 
large group and to disburse that purchasing power then amongst small 
businesses. I think that is an idea that only makes sense, and we ought 
to allow that to go forth. But unfortunately, again, the longest 440 
feet in the world is the distances between the two Chambers here in 
this building.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, tax credits. I have no problem with tax 
credits. I believe they ought to be given to individuals and not small 
businesses. I believe if we provide small businesses the purchasing 
power of large corporations with association health plans, let us save 
the tax credits for the true working poor, those who otherwise would 
not be able to afford insurance, a prefund, if you will, that would 
occur at the beginning of every year to allow an individual to purchase 
health care or health insurance on their own, and that money would not 
be able to be used for any other purpose. It would not subsidize any 
other activity in that person's or that family's life, only 
expenditures for the purchase of health insurance.
  Mr. Kondracke, who writes a column for Roll Call, not necessarily 
known as a friend of the President or a friend of the Republican Party, 
disparaged the President at the State of the Union address and said, my 
gosh, with these three proposals we would only cover about a quarter of 
the uninsured. Mr. Speaker, I maintain that if we have within our 
power, within our hands the power to cover one-quarter of the people 
who are right now in the ranks of the uninsured, today, without any 
heavy lifting, we ought to do so. I urge my colleagues on the other 
side to encourage their colleagues to help us get those three 
commonsense solutions passed.
  Finally, I have just got to say a word about medical liability 
reform. No, it is not the cost of the doctors' liability insurance that 
is driving up the cost of health care. No one believes that to be true; 
no one has said that that is the cause of health care costs rising. It 
certainly can limit access, as doctors decide they cannot afford 
liability insurance and drop out of the market or move to a more 
favorable market, but that in and of itself is not going to be driving 
up the costs of the uninsured.
  What drives up the cost of health care with the problems that we have 
with our medical justice system right

[[Page 9325]]

now are the costs of defensive medicine. A patient comes into the 
emergency room, midnight on Friday night, the doctor is called in to 
see them: gosh, it is probably just a tension headache and I can treat 
that conservatively and send them on their way, but if I miss the 
opportunity to do the CAT scan and to diagnosis the more serious 
illness, I will have a hard time defending that in court. That drives 
the cost of health insurance up.

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