[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 25802]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      THE DEMOCRATS' HEALTH CARE PLAN: WE SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD IT

  (Mr. DUNCAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, Robert Samuelson is a long-time economics 
columnist for The Washington Post. He is considered to be a very 
middle-of-the-road writer, neither liberal nor conservative.
  In yesterday's Post, he wrote a column entitled, ``Public Plan 
Mirage.'' Mr. Samuelson wrote that the public option ``is mostly an 
exercise in political avoidance: It pretends to control costs and 
improve access to quality care when it doesn't.''
  He wrote that it is a mirage because it uses ``free market rhetoric 
to expand government power'' and added that the public plan ``would 
probably doom today's private insurance.''
  The so-called opt-out provision is a mirage, too, because it does not 
allow people to opt out of paying for the program. No State could 
really opt out, because its citizens would then be paying medical bills 
for people in other States without receiving any benefits in return.
  Medicare and Medicaid have both cost about 10 times more than was 
predicted. This new health care plan will also cost many times more 
than is predicted now. We simply cannot afford it.

                          ____________________