[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25241-25242]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. BOUSTANY. Madam Speaker, 2 years ago, on September 24, Hurricane 
Rita smashed into Louisiana and Texas, making landfall first in my 
district at Johnson Bayou in Cameron Parish, a small town in southwest 
Louisiana. The storm was one of the worst ever to enter into the Gulf 
of Mexico, causing $11 billion of damage to the area.
  Hard-working individuals at the community level have had the greatest 
impact on our recovery and reconstruction, and that's despite fits and 
starts with government health and so forth. It's the individuals, local 
officials, families on the ground that made the difference.
  This storm also caused unprecedented damage to the oil and gas 
industry. Again, individuals working in those companies got our oil and 
gas infrastructure back up and running in record time, so that we could 
fuel America's energy needs.
  At the Federal level, funds have been appropriated for assistance, 
but they have been clearly slow to arrive, because of bureaucracy. This 
has been an ongoing battle that we in Congress have had to fight with 
and local officials have had to fight with as well.
  Two weeks ago, I was down there at Johnson Bayou, that little town 
where they struggled to get their school back. Actually, private 
funding allowed the school to come back before we could even get 
Federal funds down there, because of the bureaucracy. That took 2 
years, but private funds allowed for the school to be rebuilt. It was 
one of the first schools to be rebuilt back in Louisiana.
  I was down there 2 weeks ago for a very special time. We had a 
ribbon-cutting for a new health clinic in Johnson Bayou down in Cameron 
Parish. This little town did not have a health care clinic. It never 
had one. In fact, families had to drive many, many miles on small roads 
or oftentimes had to rely on a ferry to cross a body of water to 
receive health care, and if that ferry was down, they were stranded.
  But with the opening of this health clinic, for the first time, 
families at Johnson Bayou now have access to health care. This was very 
special, because a family donated the land for the clinic. A company 
actually put up money, $2 million to build the clinic, and an 
additional $1 million to fund its ongoing operations for the next 3 
years. For the first time what we have now seen is a health care clinic 
in Johnson Bayou, where the community came together to put this in 
place to create access for health care.
  You know, we all talk about how all politics is local, but I would 
submit that all health care is local. If we don't have access to health 
care, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what's available in Boston, 
Massachusetts, or in San Francisco and New York, because if the folks 
down in Johnson Bayou don't have access to health care, then what good 
is it? What good is the great advance in Boston or the wonderful 
hospitals around the country if folks can't even enter into the health 
care system in their own community?
  Access is critically important, and there are many, many things, many 
factors that affect access. I know this firsthand, as a cardiovascular 
surgeon before coming to Congress, that many rural communities don't 
have access because there aren't doctors in these rural communities, or 
there are no clinics in these rural communities.
  We have a severe shortage of physicians nationwide right now, and 
there are many reasons we have shortages. I have asked for a GAO study 
in the past on this and tried to pass an amendment in the higher 
education bill last year to look at why we have these shortages. 
Clearly there are a number of factors, and we need to correct those 
deficiencies to get a sufficient physician workforce to fill our rural 
communities and provide access.
  There are cost issues that limit access, cost for families, where 
they can't afford health insurance. There are costs, actually, 
reimbursement factors for physicians which do not provide adequate 
incentives for physicians and nurses to be in rural communities. We 
have a severe shortage of nurses. All health care is local, and we have 
to remember that if we are going to reform the health care system.
  The United States has one of the best health care systems in the 
world, and we spend significantly more on health care than any other 
nation. Health care costs have doubled between 1993 and 2004, growing 
to nearly $2 trillion annually.
  In addition to this, malpractice premiums have continued to 
skyrocket. Physicians premiums rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2002, 
and as much as 33 percent for some specialties. Many physicians are 
basically retiring early from their practices because of the severe 
costs imposed by malpractice premiums.
  Some of my Democratic colleagues and some of the presidential 
hopefuls have lately been advocating a government-run universal health 
care program, saying that this is the only way we can have universal 
coverage. But I will tell you this, and I know this as a physician, 
that universal coverage does not equate to access. Coverage is one 
thing, but if you don't have the facilities, you don't have the 
physicians, you don't have the nurses, you don't have the clinic or you 
can't afford insurance, or you can't find access, it doesn't matter 
about the coverage. It's access that's important.
  Now, one of the things that Congress is looking at is the SCHIP bill. 
One of the things that SCHIP fails to recognize is that the measure 
fails to take into account that children's health, separated from the 
parents' health coverage, is not going to be good enough. Again, it's 
access.
  I think we have to have three principles, information, choice and 
control in health care. In a subsequent speech, I will get into more of 
those things.

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