[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8115-8116]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH WEEK

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we will be closing shortly. I take the 
opportunity before doing so to comment on two issues. One is the event 
of the last week in terms of our health care initiatives and, second, 
comment on the 125th anniversary of the Red Cross which is this year.
  We have had a good week this week with a relative victory for the 
American people in terms of the issue of tax relief and the tax package 
which left here which will create jobs. The bottom line is, a good 
economy with 5 million jobs created in the last 30 or so months. 
Unemployment is down to 4.7 percent, which is lower than the average of 
the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s or the 1990s. Homeownership is doing 
well, with minority homeownership at an alltime high.
  We have good, solid economic growth. That is, in large part, first 
and foremost, due to the hard work, entrepreneurial spirit of the 
American people, no doubt. But in terms of the policy standpoint, it is 
because of the progrowth tax policy put forward by President Bush that 
this Congress has followed. Indeed, we followed it again this week in 
addressing issues surrounding tax policy on capital gains and dividends 
and keeping the alternative minimum tax from reaching out and grabbing 
another 7 million people this year. The President will sign that bill 
next week which will give us another opportunity to celebrate the great 
victory for the American people.
  Most of the time this week was spent on an issue that I feel 
passionately about, I think most people in this Senate do, the health 
care of Americans. Without health, one cannot do very much in life. We 
need that healthy body, that healthy mind for being able to be 
productive.
  We have a system today that has too many gaps in it. The greatest 
health care system in the world, one that I have been a beneficiary of 
in my own field of heart and lung transplantation and the treatment of 
heart disease and lung disease, but there are huge gaps in our health 
care system today that lead to less quality, less access, higher costs, 
gaps that are so obvious that they do require action on our part.
  This week we tried to take two of those, to keep focused on those 
two, and other Members want to grab all the other different challenges 
and challenging issues and pull them in. The only way to make progress 
in this Senate is to stay focused on an issue and move to the next 
issue and the next issue and pull together the very best.
  The first issue was medical liability. We, on this side of the aisle, 
voted to lower the cost of medicine by controlling, in some manner, the 
out-of-control litigation costs, what has become a litigation lottery--
a system today that because of medical liability premiums, because of 
frivolous lawsuits, because of the incentives given to the trial 
lawyers out there, the more predatory trial lawyers who are out there, 
punishes expectant mothers who are delivering children by driving 
obstetricians out of county and out-of-state, causes neurosurgeons to 
no longer take trauma calls at night, closing down obstetrical wards. 
We have to get that under control. It is apparent from debate, this 
side of the aisle voted in favor of commonsense reform and the other 
side voted against it.
  Then we moved to the issue of expanding health care coverage for 
millions of uninsured people in this country, focusing on the small 
businesses today that simply do not have the purchasing clout that 
larger organizations have, that the big companies have. It is sad 
because we have small businesses that are the engine of economic growth 
in this country that operate on very small margins, that simply cannot 
afford to offer health care today but allowing them to group together 
in larger and larger groups, we have that clout to bring the costs 
down.
  In both of those instances, the Democrats chose to obstruct on 
motions to proceed so we could not fully debate those issues. To me, it 
is a disappointment. It means millions of people will have access to 
health care that is not as affordable as it might be or they have no 
access at all, especially those with small businesses.
  Reforming our health care system, eliminating the gaps, getting rid 
of the waste, fraud, and abuse in our health care system today, the 
best health care system in the world, in terms of what we can do, has 
got to be a goal of this Senate. We as Republicans have led on that. We 
got a majority vote in the Senate, but we were unable to reach that 60-
vote threshold.
  The 46 million people who do not have health insurance in this 
country are a major concern to me because it is such a large gap. We 
have addressed it in the past in an incremental way with some success 
in health savings accounts, which I will come back to. The problem is 
we have so many tangled regulations, we have complicated bureaucracies 
out there with overlapping responsibility. We have an insurance market 
that is getting choked. A lot of it comes from excessive mandates. One 
mandate put on another, on another, on another, and if you put all the 
mandates in there, the cost of insurance for everyone goes up. Then it 
is out of reach of the small business person or the person who has a 
modest income.
  We will keep pressing forward. We on this side of the aisle, 
Republicans, recognize that our health care system lacks some of the 
fundamental mechanisms that are required in order to get rid of the 
waste, fraud, and abuse to make it more transparent, to make it more 
efficient. We have to be able to harness the transparency, having the 
21st century information out there in order for people to make good 
decisions so that individuals can make more choices. We have hundreds 
of millions of health care decisions being made, all of which drive 
toward better access and higher quality and lower cost.
  If we look out to where we want to be going as we address medical 
liability, which is killing our system, as we address the small 
business health reform, it is for a 21st century health care system 
that is driven by that information, that is out there that is available 
today, that is driven by choice, it is driven by that element of 
control.
  Health care should not be a red State, blue State, Democratic, 
Republican, liberal, conservative matter. We have to come together. We 
did so with the health savings accounts, I mentioned few moments ago; 
accounts where an individual has a deductible

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plan where you can save for you only, you take it with you, you control 
it. The decisions you make have an impact, and they have been very 
successful. Three million people today have health savings accounts. 
None had health savings accounts 3 years ago. And most of the 3 million 
people had no health insurance in the past. So it begins to chip away 
at that large number of uninsured people in this country.
  Another issue we have passed in this Senate in a bipartisan way is 
electronic medical records, information technology so that we can 
develop a platform on which we can make good choices, transparent 
choices, and can be held accountable. There is a communication among 
hospitals and doctors and consumers and patients which, with that 
communication, gets rid of all the waste. That has the obvious ability, 
through electronic medical records, to have seamless health care no 
matter where people are. If you are in an accident in Kentucky and you 
are from Tennessee, your doctor at that trauma hospital can immediately 
know something about you, what your blood type is, what your allergies 
are, what medicines you are on, by a push of a button. Now this is done 
through fax machines and phone calls or going to the basement for 
records of hospitals and clinics to retrieve information.
  We passed that in the Senate. The House has not yet addressed that 
issue. But, again, it is another example of where this Senate can work 
together, as with the health savings accounts, that we can pass 
legislation that is to the benefit of all Americans. That is real 
progress. We can make progress.
  I am disappointed in this week that we did not have the other side of 
the aisle participating in these very important issues. But we will 
continue to address them as we move ahead.

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