[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19622-19623]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE COST OF MEDICAID, MEDICARE AND THE DEMOCRATIC HEALTH CARE BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, we heard from CBO that the President's 
plan for health care could cost an extra $1 trillion to $2 trillion. 
That's on top of what we're already spending. Well, I started looking 
at that this year and asked my staff to help me gather the statistics. 
What we got from the CRS and also the Census Bureau was the estimate 
for the last year that we had a full year's numbers, for 2007, of how 
much Medicare and Medicaid cost in tax dollars.
  We took the estimate from the Census Bureau of how many households

[[Page 19623]]

there were in America in 2007. There were 112 million households 
estimated. You divide the number of households in America into the 
amount of tax dollars spent for the year 2007, and it's over $9,200 for 
every household in America being spent on Medicare and Medicaid. When 
you realize that every house on average is coming up with $9,200 in 
order to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, what struck me is we can do so 
much better than this. This is atrocious. We've got seniors all over 
the country who are buying wraparound or surplus coverage to supplement 
their Medicare coverage, people on Medicaid; and that didn't even 
include the amount being paid for SCHIP.
  So I have asked for the latest projection from the Census Bureau as 
of today. The Census Bureau is projecting that for right now in America 
there are about 117 million households in America. We were told that 
the President's health care bill would cost somewhere between $1 
trillion and $2 trillion.
  So I got this chart. I want to do some simple division here. We've 
got $1.170 trillion because we feel like that is a conservative 
estimate since the President's projection would cost somewhere between 
$1 trillion and $2 trillion, and we know there are 117 million 
households in America. Well, let's see how much the President's plan is 
going to cost every household in America. It's easy if you have a good 
public school education like I did back in the day. We'll take that off 
of both sides, cancel that off of both sides, then divide 117 into 
$1,170,000.
  Folks, the President's plan is going to cost an additional $10,000 
for every household in America on top of the $9,200 per household we're 
paying in America right now. Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, how much we 
could do with that kind of money? Well, that's what hit me.
  So the point is we finally got back tonight the plan that I had 
submitted. Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to Leg Counsel. I trash-
mouthed them a little bit the last few days because they stonewalled my 
plan, I thought; but they pushed. They got it through. We got it 
tonight. For much less money, this plan will buy every household in 
America that has people on Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, it will buy them 
private insurance with a $3,500 deductible and put cash money in a 
debit card account for their health savings account. They will for the 
first time in over 40 years have control of their future, control of 
their health care; and, by golly, they will have complete coverage. Not 
in America ever have they had complete coverage. This will give them 
control.
  Then we don't have to read articles like the one in Politico about 
the President's plan promoting euthanasia. Will it or will it not? We 
don't need to go there. We don't have to go there.

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