[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23488-23489]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, President Reagan once said that the status 
quo is Latin for ``the mess we're in.'' ``A mess'' is unquestionably an 
accurate way to describe America's unhealthy health care system. The 
cost of staying healthy is rising too fast, much faster than families' 
incomes. Insurance companies are not cutting costs; instead, they are 
cutting benefits, often at the very time people need them the most. 
When costs go up as wages go down, when the sick are singled out and 
robbed of their health care, something has to give. Unfortunately, the 
``give'' in this case is hardworking families, more and more of whom 
file for bankruptcy and foreclosure every day because they cannot pay 
their medical bills. The casualties are the patients who put off a 
needed doctor's visit or do not get a medical procedure they need 
because it costs too much. The casualties are the people who cannot 
afford an important prescription, who use an expired prescription, who 
skip a dose of medicine or even take some pills and split them. You can 
even buy now, in a drugstore, a little plastic device that has a little 
blade in it that can cut your pills in half. Especially seniors are 
buying this now. They do this because they can't afford to stay healthy 
in the richest country in the world.
  Every day, more and more families know what I am talking about. It is 
not just happening to a handful or a hundred, it is not just 
threatening thousands. The fact is, one in five Nevadans can't afford 
health insurance and those who do have it are at great risk of losing 
it. If we do not act today, 10 years from now health care costs will 
more than double and the number of Nevadans who can't afford health 
insurance will nearly double as well. It is the same in the States of 
Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Utah, California, and New 
Mexico. It does not matter where you are. That is a mess. It is not 
right. And it is what Democrats have been working so hard to turn 
around.
  You have all heard a lot about our plan over the past months. I hope 
you know we are fighting to protect what works about the system, fix 
what does not, and help the middle class get ahead. You know we are 
fighting to stabilize health insurance for those who have it and help 
secure it for those who do not. We are fighting to keep the insurance 
industry honest and protect Medicare. We are fighting to lower costs 
for every family so every American can afford good, quality care that 
can never be taken away. And we are doing it all without adding a dime 
to the deficit.
  That plan sounds pretty good to me, but some Republicans do not seem 
too fond of that plan. We have heard much about what their opposition 
has been in recent weeks and months. But what you have not heard a lot 
about is what the Republicans do think is the best way to fix our 
broken health care system.
  Well, here are the basics. Under the Republican plan, insurance 
companies can deny you coverage when you need it the most, because they 
want the status quo. That is the status quo. Under the Republican plan, 
that is the status quo. Insurance companies can deny you coverage 
because you have high cholesterol, hay fever, or heart disease. They 
can raise your rates because you are getting older, because your dad 
had prostate cancer, or simply because you are a woman. That is the 
status quo.

[[Page 23489]]

That is what they want. Under the Republican plan, if you do have 
health insurance, your family has to pay more than $1,000 a year extra 
to cover all of those who have no health insurance. If that plan sounds 
familiar, if it sounds like a mess, that is because it is exactly the 
same mess we are already in. As Ronald Reagan would say, that plan 
already goes by another name--I repeat--the status quo, the ``mess'' 
described by President Reagan.
  Some might ask: Why would they be supporting the status quo? Why 
would they refuse to fix such a central part of our economy when it is 
so clearly and so badly broken?
  Paul Krugman has a theory. Krugman, of course, won the Nobel Prize 
for economics last year. He teaches at Princeton, one of our finest 
universities, and writes a widely respected column in the New York 
Times. In his column today, he blames what he called ``the politics of 
spite.'' He noticed that most Republicans who resist health insurance 
are fighting it for the sake of fighting it. He observed that while we 
are fighting for hard-working families, Republicans are busy fighting 
us. He pointed out that there is no Republican plan to help people, 
only a plan to hurt the President. These politics are simply out of 
touch. The majority of Americans know our recovering economy needs 
health insurance reform now more than ever. The majority of Americans 
support the idea that health insurance companies should be required to 
cover every family. And the majority of Americans support creating more 
competition in the marketplace to drive down the cost of health 
insurance.
  There are those who reflexively and recklessly stand in the way of 
what we all know needs to be done. Although their megaphone is very 
loud, they constitute a small minority. This is the minority--this is 
very hard to comprehend--the same minority who happily pumped one fist 
when America lost its bid to host the Olympics. They were cheering--we 
saw it on television--because we lost the Olympics. But they shake the 
other fist at those who slander us as unpatriotic. This is the same 
minority who disputes indisputable evidence about how our health care 
plan will help seniors or disputes undisputable evidence about our 
President's birth records. This is the same minority who relies on 
distortions, distractions, and deception to change the subject away 
from health care rather than debate the facts in good faith. Paul 
Krugman was right to call it the ``politics of spite,'' and he was 
right to conclude that such blind malice has no role in the legislative 
process.
  Just as the majority of Americans yearn for the day when they can 
afford to live a healthy life without fear of living just one accident, 
one illness, or one pink slip away from losing everything, a majority 
of Americans also are hopeful about reform. They are optimistic. All of 
the polls indicate there should be reform.
  I had the good fortune of serving in the Senate with Bill Frist. Bill 
Frist, when he came to the Senate, was a famous transplant surgeon. I 
can remember him telling me about, as a young surgeon, traveling to 
places in a small airplane to pick up a heart so he could take it and 
give it to someone else to give them life. He did that himself, he 
carried it himself, a very famous surgeon.
  In the book I wrote, an autobiography, I talk about Bill Frist. Here 
on the Senate floor, whenever in a private conversation the subject of 
health care came up, his eyes lit. He was so into medicine. That was 
who he was. He was Dr. Bill Frist. He was a Republican. As I have 
indicated, he was a physician, and a good one. But here is what he said 
last Friday, a couple of days ago: If he still served in this body, he 
would vote for health insurance that will soon come to the floor. That 
is Bill Frist.
  Former Senate Republican Leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker, both 
famous men, have similarly supported reform--not specific reform, but 
they say reform should come to be. They didn't have the benefit of 
seeing this legislation as did Bill Frist.
  All three--Frist, Dole, and Baker--have come out because they know it 
is necessary, it is overdue, and it is right. This is not a partisan 
issue. All three have recognized that the status quo is not an option. 
All three have done so in the spirit of service, not a sense of spite. 
How did they reach this conclusion when so many of the Republican 
colleagues in this body and elsewhere have not?
  I will quote Bill Frist directly, Dr. Frist. He said:

       I would take heat for it. . . . That's what leadership is 
     all about.

  I encourage all my Republican colleagues to consider the words of two 
men on opposite sides of the political spectrum--Krugman, a real 
progressive, and Frist, a real conservative--who disagree on much about 
a lot of things. But both know that leadership, courage, and honesty 
will improve the lives of the people we represent. I encourage them to 
heed the words of a hero of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, who 
knew that anytime one defends a broken status quo, it only makes a bad 
situation worse and, in Reagan's words, ``a mess.''

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