[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15092]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   IT IS TIME TO BAIL OUT MAIN STREET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we've bailed out Wall Street once already 
this year. We may be doing it again soon. But it's time to bail out 
Main Street by doing what we should have done 50 years ago, and that is 
provide Americans with universal health care. It's the fastest and most 
effective way Congress can shore up the American family. Because we all 
know that Americans are either paying too much for health care, can't 
afford to buy enough coverage, or can't afford any coverage at all. And 
the cost in dollars and in human terms is staggering.
  A generation ago, the head of General Motors famously said, ``as GM 
goes, so goes the Nation.'' It's no secret that GM and America are 
struggling with an economic crisis. We can make the difference by 
addressing the single largest expense facing an American family and 
American business today, health care. Every day in America, the 
American people are forced to dig deeper and deeper into their own 
pockets to pay for health care. And every day American business is 
forced to transfer more of the burden to employees or drop coverage 
altogether.
  America's health care system today looks like an ambulance riding on 
one wheel. And even that wheel will soon fall off if we continue to 
support a failed system that is not made in America, not worthy of 
America and nothing more than an accident of history.
  In the early 20th century, there was a movement to provide universal 
health care. But ironically it was fiercely opposed by the insurance 
industry at a time when it made most of its money selling death 
benefits to those who feared a pauper's grave. Emerging from the Great 
Depression in 1930, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to institute 
universal health care. But his advisers feared the American Medical 
Association would kill FDR's proposal for Social Security in their 
opposition to health care.
  In the 1950s, the legendary labor leader, Walter Reuther, first won a 
health care benefit and a pension too for automobile workers in a labor 
agreement with General Motors. Then Reuther tried to enlist GM and 
others to join forces and lobby the Federal Government to institute 
universal health care. But business couldn't see coming the economic 
storm from global competition and didn't trust government. Organized 
labor, flush from a victory in Detroit, saw health care as a perpetual 
win at the bargaining table, and organized medicine was relentless at 
lobbying until they drove the universal health care program into the 
ditch again.
  In the second half of the 20th century, there were other attempts by 
the American leaders, but all of them were killed by seemingly 
unlimited lobbying resources. Today we have 50 million Americans with 
no health care coverage at all, another 25 million Americans without 
adequate protection, and every American can't find pants with pockets 
deep enough to keep paying costs that are already out of sight.
  The only universal truth about health care in America today is that 
every single American knows someone with a health care crisis or is 
facing one themselves. American business has to compete today in a 
global economy, but American business has a major health care benefit 
expense on its books that the international competitors do not have. 
Even great companies in my congressional district, which are national 
models to providing employee benefits like health care, are being 
stretched to the limit, and their balance sheets, like a rubber band, 
can only flex so much before they break.
  We cannot stand idly by and watch when we know that developing and 
instituting an American single payer health care system can 
dramatically improve the health of American business and American 
families literally and financially. And for the first time in decades, 
we have a chance if we're willing to seize the opportunity. There are 
cracks in the dams of opposition. A new survey of U.S. doctors 
published recently in the Annals of Health Research finds that 59 
percent of American doctors now support single payer health care plans, 
which is a dramatic double-digit increase in support in the last 7 
years.
  The U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution a few weeks ago. 
Organized labor recognizes a changing global economy that means they 
can best represent workers not at one bargaining table, but on a 
national level where everyone benefits equally.
  Even business is beginning to rethink its trust of government. In 
2002, Detroit's auto subsidiaries in Canada strongly supported 
continuation of a single payer health care program because of its 
positive economic impact on them and their workers.
  A few years ago, I asked businesses' executives if they would be 
willing to pay 6 percent of their revenue to off-load health care and 
no one raised their hand. Now the average cost is 13 percent for 
business, and a business leader recently asked me if that deal was 
still on the table. I'm here to say single payer is on the table. It's 
time to breach the dam of opposition and create a single payer health 
care system for the health and well-being of the American people and 
American business.
  We have tried the alternatives. The free enterprise system has had 50 
years. But they can't do it. They have failed again and again, and the 
costs go up all the time. It's time to do what works in every 
industrialized country in the world.

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