[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 15863-15865]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. INHOFE. It is easy to say, and people will applaud when they say: 
You are going to end up getting something for nothing. You are going to 
get an education for nothing. You are going to get a college education. 
You are going to get health care for nothing. That sounds real good. 
Someone has to pay for all this stuff.
  I suggest that if you go up to the Mayo Clinic in the Northern tier 
of the United States, you will look and you will see a very large 
population of patients from Canada who are there; patients who have 
been told: Well, yes, you have breast cancer. But because you are at a 
certain age, we are not able to operate on you. If we do, it is going 
to be a waiting period of some 18 months. At the end of that time, of 
course, the patient is going anyway.
  We are talking about, in this country, we need to do something about 
it, about the way we have been running our health care system. I think 
improvements can be made. I remember one time the first lithotripter 
was used, I believe, in a hospital in my State of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, 
OK, at St. Johns Hospital.
  That was a technique where you could submerge a patient and dissolve 
different things that were within them, kidney stones and that type of 
thing. However, they could not use it. So they had to surgically and 
very invasively operate on people and cut them open to remove these 
things that could otherwise have been dissolved.
  But the problem was, we have, in our Medicare system, a lot of people 
who are making medical decisions who are not qualified. So we have a 
lot of improvements that need to be made. But by adopting a system that 
has been a failure everyplace it has been tried, whether it is Sweden 
or Great Britain or Canada, is not something we are prepared to do in 
this country. I know the effort is out there, and they are going to 
make every effort to see that that happens. We are going to make sure 
that does not happen.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I know that most of my colleagues seem to 
enjoy the government health care plan of which they are a member. I am 
always surprised when I hear my colleagues, first of all, almost all of 
whom are on the government health insurance plan, talking about the 
government not providing a decent health care plan.
  I particularly am intrigued when I hear my colleagues say it is a 
dismal failure anywhere else in the world. I am not proud of this, as I 
stand on the floor of the Senate, but I know we spend twice what almost 
any other country does in the world on health care.
  I also know that in the rankings, based on the rankings of various 
kinds of health care indexes, maternal mortality, infant mortality, 
life expectancy, immunization rates, the United States ranks near the 
last among the rich industrialized countries.
  But in one category, the United States of America rates almost first 
among the rich industrialized countries; that is, life expectancy at 
65. If an American gets to the age of 65, yes,

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we do have some of the best health care in the world because everybody 
has the opportunity to join Medicare. And 99 percent of our society's 
elderly, 99 percent-plus, belong to Medicare.
  When I hear my colleagues, most of whom are on the government health 
insurance plan paid for by taxpayers, saying that government cannot do 
health insurance in pointing to other countries saying it is a failure 
everywhere else, I look at them a little quizzically, because when I 
hear--when I talk to a Canadian, they have to wait too long, they 
underfund their system. But I do not see Canadians repealing their 
health care law because they are unhappy with it. I do not see the 
Brits doing it, I do not see the French or the Germans or the Japanese 
or the Italians. They spend less than we do, and they have higher life 
expectancies, they have a lower maternal mortality rate, lower infant 
mortality rates.
  So maybe we can learn something. That being said, health care 
reform--I am right now working across the street with Chairman Dodd and 
Senator Coburn and others in both parties writing health care 
legislation.
  Health care reform, first and foremost, is about protecting what is 
working in our system--there is much that works well in our health care 
system--and fixing what is broken in our system. That is, in a 
nutshell, what we are doing. We are working to protect what works in 
our health care system. We need to fix what is broken. It is about 
giving Americans the choices in the health care they want.
  It is about providing economic stability for millions of middle-class 
families in Ohio and around the Nation, in Delaware and other States, 
the Presiding Officer's State.
  I know an awful lot of people, a huge number of people in our 
country, say: You know, I am pleased with the health insurance I have. 
It works pretty well. The copays may be a little too high, the 
deductibles may be too high, I argue with insurance companies more than 
I would like to. So they are generally happy. We want to protect what 
is working.
  But an awful lot of families know they are a pink slip and an illness 
away from bankruptcy. A whole lot of families know they are watching 
their health care disintegrate or at least decline. They are seeing 
copays go up. They are seeing drug coverage scaled back. They are 
seeing their dental care and their vision care eliminated because their 
employers cannot afford it. So, again, we have to protect what works, 
we need to fix what is broken.
  A part of economic stability for health care is the public health 
insurance option. It is an option. A public health insurance option 
would expand health insurance choices available to Americans. It would 
increase competition in the health insurance market.
  There is hardly an American alive who has private health insurance 
that does not think they have been mistreated from time to time by 
their insurance company.
  Bringing more competition to the insurance market with a public 
health insurance option--whether you take it, whether you stay in your 
private health insurance, your choice or you go unto the public health 
option, again your choice, some Medicare lookalike, you can make that 
choice.
  But the existence of both of them will make them both better. It will 
make the public health insurance Medicare lookalike option better, it 
will make private insurance better, because, what? Presto. It is 
American competition. It is what works.
  But every time meaningful health care reform has been debated over 
the last six decades, we have heard misleading shouts from 
conservatives, from insurance companies, from the American Medical 
Association.
  They say government takeover. They say bureaucratic redtape. They say 
socialized medicine. We heard it in 1949, after President Harry Truman 
was first elected. He had been President for almost 4 years after 
succeeding President Roosevelt.
  President Truman called for health insurance reform. They said it was 
socialized medicine. We heard it even back in the early 1930s, when 
Franklin Roosevelt was creating Social Security, thought about creating 
``health security'' at the same time, a Medicare-like program. He 
backed off because of the opposition of the American Medical 
Association because he knew they would say ``socialized medicine.''
  Then they said it a decade and a half later when Harry Truman was 
President. Then another decade and a half later, as you know, they, 
again, the doctors and the insurance companies and the conservatives 
and many in the Republican Party and both Houses, again, said 
``socialized medicine,'' when we were passing Medicare.
  We know Medicare is not socialized medicine. You have your choice of 
doctor, your choice of hospital, your choice of providers. Medicare is 
the payer, the government serves as the insurance company. That is not 
socialism. That is just a program the American people love.
  We hear these same kinds of things now. We hear about a public health 
insurance option. We hear it is socialism, a government takeover, it is 
bureaucratic redtape. Yet at the kitchen tables of middle-class homes 
in Toledo and Dayton and Akron and Gallipolis and Zanesville and 
Mansfield and Lima in my State, hard-working families are talking about 
using mortgage payments to pay for a sick child's health care 
treatment.
  Small business owners are talking about cutting jobs because health 
care insurance costs simply are too high. Around the Nation, middle-
class Americans are talking about how public health insurance options 
are needed to help provide economic stability for their families.
  As we debate reform, we cannot forget that millions of Americans are 
depending upon us, us in this Chamber, and our colleagues on the other 
end of the building, depending upon us to do the right thing.
  We should listen to people such as Darlene, a school nurse from 
Cleveland. Darlene treats students who come from economically 
distressed neighborhoods, who lack access to healthy food, who lack 
access to safe recreation. Her students struggle in school because they 
are worried about a sick parent or grandparent who cannot afford health 
care.
  Darlene wrote to me describing that one student has asthma and has a 
heart condition. This is a grade school student. But she does not have 
an inhaler because her parents are unemployed and they lack health 
insurance. She has asthma attacks, but she does not have an inhaler 
because her parents simply cannot afford it.
  We are not going to pass a public health insurance option?
  At a time when too many Americans are struggling to pay health care 
costs, the public health care option will make health insurance more 
affordable. Our Nation spends more than $2 trillion--$2 trillion--that 
is 2,000 billion dollars. Mr. President, if you had $1 billion, if you 
spent $1 dollar every second of every minute of every hour of every 
day, it would take you 31 years to spend that $1 billion.
  We spend on health insurance 2,000 billion dollars, 1 trillion. Think 
how much that is. Yet too many of our citizens are only a hospital 
visit away from a financial disaster. We cannot afford to squander this 
opportunity for reform. We cannot settle for marginal improvement. 
Instead, we must fight for substantial reforms that will significantly 
improve our health care system.
  Remember, it is about protecting what works and fixing what is 
broken. That is why we must make sure a public health insurance option 
is available for Americans, not controlled by the health insurance 
industry. We must preserve access to employer-sponsored coverage for 
those who want to keep their current plan. But that is not enough. Give 
Americans the choice to go with a private or public health insurance 
plan and let them compete with each other. It is good policy. It is 
common sense. A public insurance option will make health care 
affordable for small business owners such as Chris from Summit County.
  Chris writes that his small business is struggling to keep up with 
rising health insurance costs for his employees. He is getting priced 
out of the

[[Page 15865]]

market. Chris explains how a public health insurance option would help 
reduce the cost to his small business and provide the employees the 
health care they need that he so much wants to provide to his employees 
whom he cares about, whom he knows are productive, who help him pay the 
bills.
  Chris wants me and other Members of the Senate to push for real 
change for the health care system that helps small business owners and 
workers alike.
  A public health insurance option would also make insurance affordable 
for Americans struggling when life throws them a curve, such as Karen 
from Toledo. She wrote to me explaining how she now takes care of her 
adult son who is suffering from advanced MS. Over the course of the 
last 5 years, her son lost his small business, lost his insurance, then 
was diagnosed with progressive MS. They spent years meeting with 
specialists, dealing with insurers, fighting for care.
  All the while, Karen dropped out of her Ph.D. program because her 
savings were depleted and she needed to take care of her son and she 
had no one else to turn to.
  And we are not going to pass a public health insurance option?
  The public health insurance option would offer American workers and 
families such as Karen and her son affordable, transitional insurance 
if you lose your job and lose your insurance. We cannot let the health 
insurance industry dictate how the health care system works or limit 
the coverage option Americans deserve.
  Anyone who has had to shop for individual health coverage knows how 
expensive it can be, even if you are eligible, such as Peter from 
Cincinnati. Peter retired after a successful career as an architect, 
where he enjoyed very good health care coverage. After he retired, he 
thought he would have no problem affording private health insurance 
coverage. But despite never filing a claim, his premiums and his 
deductibles kept rising, forcing him to buy a second policy. And merely 
2 weeks after total knee replacement surgery, his secondary insurer 
dropped him and left him with a bill of $27,000. Peter asked that we 
fix what is broken.
  And we are not going to pass a public health insurance option?
  That is what we are here to do. Millions of Americans are demanding a 
public health insurance option that increases choice for all Americans 
and provides economic stability for our Nation's middle-class families. 
The stories of Darlene, Chris, Karen, and Peter must guide this 
administration and must direct this Congress to protect and provide 
health care for all Americans.
  Health care reform is about protecting what works and fixing what is 
broken.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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