[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14272-14273]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, when it comes to health care, Americans 
are looking for answers. They don't understand why basic medical 
procedures are so expensive. They don't understand why millions of 
Americans have to go without basic care in a nation as prosperous as 
our own. Many are worried about losing the care they already have and 
like.
  So the need for health care reform is not in question. All of us want 
reform. The question is: What kind of reform will we deliver? And two 
very different approaches are now beginning to come into view.
  According to one approach, the government plays the dominant role by 
getting into the health care business and leverages taxpayers' money to 
muscle everybody else out of the way. Under this approach, the vast 
majority of Americans who like the health care they have risk losing it 
when a government-run system takes over.
  The other approach is to find ways of controlling costs, such as 
discouraging the junk lawsuits that drive up the cost of practicing 
medicine and limit access to care in places like rural Kentucky; 
lifting barriers that currently diminish the effectiveness of 
prevention and wellness programs that have been shown to reduce health 
care costs, like quitting smoking, fighting obesity, and making early 
diagnoses; and, finally, letting small businesses pool resources to 
lower insurance costs--without imposing new taxes that kill jobs.
  This second approach acknowledges that government already plays a 
major role in the health care system, and that it will continue to play 
a role in any solution we devise. But this approach is also based on 
the principle that government cannot be the solution. Americans want 
options, not a government-run plan that drives every private health 
plan out of business and forces people to give up the care they 
currently have and like.
  The Secretary of Health and Human Services acknowledged this concern 
about a health care monopoly when she described those parts of the 
country where certain private health plans already have a monopoly. 
``In many areas in the country,'' she said, ``the private market is 
monopolized by one carrier . . . You do not have a choice for 
consumers. And what we know in any kind of market is a monopoly does 
not give much incentive for other innovation or for cost-effective 
strategies.''
  Well, if this is true of private health plans, then it would be 
especially true of a government-run health plan. If a government-run 
plan came into being, concerns about a monopoly would not just be 
regional, they would be national.

[[Page 14273]]

  Another problem with a government plan is a feature that has become 
all too common in nations that have adopted one. Many of these nations 
have established so-called government boards as part of their 
government health plans that end up determining which benefits are 
covered and which benefits are not covered. Our former colleague and 
the President's first choice for HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle, envisions 
just such a board in his widely cited book on the topic. ``The Federal 
Health Board,'' he writes, ``would promote `high value' medical care by 
recommending coverage of those drugs and procedures backed by solid 
evidence.''
  What this means is that the Federal Government would start telling 
Americans what drugs they can and cannot have. We know this because 
that is exactly what is happening in countries that have adopted these 
government boards. They have categorically denied cutting-edge 
treatments either because the treatments cost too much or because 
someone in the government decided the patients who needed it were 
either too old or too sick to be worth the effort. When these countries 
enacted health boards, I am sure their intention was not to delay and 
deny care. But that is exactly what these government boards are doing.
  The writer and commentator Virginia Postrel, who has written for the 
New York Times and the Wall Street Journal recently wrote an account of 
her own first-hand experience with breast cancer and her ability to 
treat it successfully with the drug Herceptin here in the U.S. Postrel 
said the availability of the drug increased her chances of survival 
from a coin flip to 95 percent. A year after beginning her treatments, 
Postrel wrote that she had no signs of cancer.
  In the same article, Postrel points out that the situation is far 
different in New Zealand, where a government board known as Pharmac 
decided that Herceptin should not be made available to some cancer 
patients in that country. As one cancer doctor in New Zealand put it, 
New Zealand ``is a good tourist destination, but options for cancer 
treatment are not so attractive there right now.'' Bureaucrats in New 
Zealand finally relented and allowed coverage for Herceptin, due in 
part to a public outcry over the limited availability of the drug.
  New Zealanders have also been denied access to drugs that have proven 
to be effective in reducing the risk of heart disease and strokes. 
According to an article from 2006 in The New Zealand Medical Journal, 
the restrictions placed on statins by New Zealand's government board 
significantly hampered the preventative approach to heart disease. As 
the authors of the article put it, ``[it is probable that . . . this 
one decision] has caused more harm and premature death to New Zealand 
patients than any of their other maneuvers.''
  Americans want health care reform. But they do not want reform that 
destroys what is good about American health care in the process. They 
do not want a government bureaucrat making arbitrary decisions about 
which drugs they or their loved ones can or cannot take to treat an 
illness. And they do not want to be told they have to give up the care 
they have. Americans do not want a government-run health plan. And they 
certainly do not want a government board to dictate their health care 
coverage. They want real reform that solves the problems they face 
without sacrificing the benefits they enjoy.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________