[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 25842-25847]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              PROVIDING AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is always an honor to be here on this 
floor where so much history has been made. I can't help but think of 
the quote from Thomas Jefferson: ``The natural course of things is for 
liberty to yield and government to gain.''
  What we have been faced with and what is being negotiated behind 
closed doors, interesting negotiations, there are no Republicans that 
have been allowed anywhere near, despite all the promises of the most 
open government that we would have once President Obama was in the 
White House and Speaker Pelosi was Speaker and Harry Reid was the 
Majority Leader in the Senate. Those things just simply have not 
materialized.
  I keep hearing people, and I have heard them on both sides of the 
aisle, say we want health insurance for everyone. What I want for 
everyone is health care; health care that is affordable, health care 
that is accessible.
  Health insurance? I gave a speech to health insurance folks here last 
year and I pointed out, you think you are selling insurance, but this 
is not insurance. You are selling management by health insurance 
companies of health care. It is not insurance.
  Look it up. Insurance is not paying a company to manage everything 
for you. Insurance is when you pay a little premium, a small premium, 
sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly, sometimes for a whole year. You 
pay that to ensure against some unforeseeable event out there in the 
future.
  Now, when I was growing up in East Texas, there were precious few 
people that had any insurance, but the ones that did, they paid a tiny 
premium to insure against some catastrophic illness overtaking them or 
some terrible accident that left them in need of expensive health care, 
and that insurance would cover them.
  For the rest of us, if you got sick, you knew exactly what the cost 
was at each doctor's clinic, at the hospital, and you also knew if you 
got sick and had to go to the doctor's office what it would cost. But 
if it was more than you could pay, then there was usually someone near 
the front counter who could work out a monthly payment for you to pay. 
But, as a patient, you had control of your health care.
  I have been intrigued. It just leaves you with a broken heart to hear 
all the troubling stories from our colleagues across the aisle about 
the tragedies of sickness or accident. But I have heard the same thing 
except, many-fold more, about socialized medicine.
  As an exchange student in the Soviet Union in 1973, I had a chance to 
see socialized medicine up close and personal, the way it gets after it 
has existed for a number of years. People rarely ever saw the same 
doctor when they went.
  The doctors, it was not an honor to be a doctor there. College 
students with whom I came in contact and got to know, if they had a 
parent, a father or mother that was a doctor, they were not all that 
thrilled to tell you. They were tickled to death to tell you if they 
had a parent that was assistant to the assistant manager of a factory, 
but not so much of doctors.
  Here in the United States, doctors traditionally have been paid well, 
and it has inspired the very best and brightest among us to aspire to 
go to medical school and become doctors to help people. And what seems 
to have been missing from heartrending story after heartrending story 
are any good stories.

                              {time}  2145

  So if someone is visiting the United States, and the only exposure 
that they have to hearing about our health care is from the stories 
from our friends across the aisle, they would certainly want to avoid 
U.S. hospitals, U.S. doctors and U.S. clinics because of all the 
terrible tragedies that seem to be the only thing that occur; when the 
fact is, this country provides a better level of care than anywhere not 
only in the world but in history.
  I've had doctors who were historians indicate that before 1910--not 
even a full 100 years ago--before 1910, if you went to the doctor, the 
odds were about 50-50 that you would actually be helped by going to the 
doctor instead of being harmed by going to the doctor. Just down the 
road out here you can get to Mount Vernon, to George Washington's home. 
We have a beautiful painting over here similar to the one hanging in 
the White House of George Washington, all 6-foot-3\1/2\. Though some 
say he was not that tall, they knew he was that tall when they measured 
him on the slab after his death. But he died at an age that was 
unexpected for him because he seemed to be in such good health. He had 
been out marking trees that were going to be cut down. He didn't know 
that he might someday get a carbon credit for them, so he had marked 
them to be cut down. It was during the cold and during the rain, and he 
got a cold. He didn't get out of his wet clothing very quickly. He had 
dinner the night he came back. He didn't do much about the cold. But 
before long, it began to overtake him.
  One of his closest friends in the world was his doctor, Dr. Craik. I 
think he was bled three times, and they just could not understand why 
they kept draining out the bad blood, as they thought, out of the great 
father of our country, and he just seemed to not be getting better. 
They didn't know the damage they were doing to this giant of a man.
  But we get past 1910, and because of the free market system in this 
country, health care has been elevated to a level never before seen in 
the history of mankind. What is missing in some of the stories that 
have been told are some of the stories that I have personally heard and 
have become familiar with.
  Sue Clark lives in Tyler. She told me that she emigrated from 
England. Her mother got cancer living in England and, as is normally 
the case with socialized medicine, there, in Canada and

[[Page 25843]]

soon to be here if the health care bill either the House or the Senate 
is talking about makes its way and gets passed, signed into law, people 
will go on lists the same way here. So when the President says, We're 
cutting $500 billion or so in Medicare, but we're not going to deny 
coverage to anyone, not going to deny treatment, what we see in these 
other countries is that they're not technically denied treatment or 
care. They're put on lists. And as it goes with socialized medicine, in 
order for the socialized medicine health care system not to go broke, 
people end up dying on the list, waiting to get their health care 
coverage.
  That's what Sue said happened with her mother. Because her mother got 
cancer in England, she died of the cancer, which would have been an 
unnecessary outcome, had she been living in the United States, as Sue 
said. Sue got cancer here in the United States. She didn't go on a 
list. She is a secretary, as I recall, and she said she didn't go on a 
list. She knows she's alive today because she emigrated from England 
and got away from the socialized government, single-payer health care, 
whatever you want to call it, public option. Over there it's not a 
public option. It's a public requirement. But, anyway, her mother died 
of cancer because she was in a country that had the kind of health care 
that those across the aisle--many of them that is, not all of them--are 
aspiring to give us here.
  By the same token, I know personally of incredible stories, of people 
who didn't have money for health care and doctors provided it, doctors 
who answered the call in the middle of the night and came rushing down 
to help, even though they knew there was a good chance they wouldn't 
get paid. Doctors, hospitals and clinics providing free care. I come 
back to my friends across the aisle who seem to indicate, like the one 
indicated earlier today that the guy was told because he was not from 
here in the United States and because he didn't have health insurance 
and because he didn't have $250 to pay cash, he could not demand and 
require that the doctor he wanted to see had to see him. My friend 
across the aisle was upset about that. He was told he'd have to go to 
the emergency room to get that treatment.
  I've also talked to physicians who said that if there was any way to 
require even a $5 copay, it would root out so many of the people that 
just show up at the emergency room with colds, things like I get--maybe 
because of the stress or I'm not getting more than 2 or 3 hours sleep 
so often around here. We get colds. I don't go to the hospital. I don't 
go to the doctor. We have got great over-the-counter medical supplies. 
So you can go pick them up. I don't use insurance for those kinds of 
things. You just get what you need. I am familiar with what it costs. 
When I went out on my own as an attorney and left the big firm I 
started with, I was determined not to steal any clients, as I knew some 
lawyers had been accused of doing. So I started out with next to 
nothing. That first year that I was on my own, my adjusted gross income 
was $12,000. We had a daughter who was about 2, and the only thing we 
could afford to give her that Christmas was a free puppy dog that my 
late mother had found and thought my daughter would love, and she did.
  I know something about having to scrape and scrimp and build a 
business. Within 3 years of going out on my own, I ended up paying more 
in income tax than I ever made at the big firm where I went to work 
after I got out of the Army service. So I know something about 
scrimping. I know something about not having the money to give your 
child everything you want. I understand. But the free market system, 
when allowed to work properly, can do amazing things.
  But I'm telling you, Madam Speaker, and I would tell the world, I 
don't want health insurance companies or the government managing my 
health care. I want to make those decisions, and I want everybody else 
to have that same freedom. I want them to have coverage where they can 
afford it, and I want them to have the best health care that is 
available in this country, and that's doable. But not by socializing 
medicine.
  You hear the stories over and over. We heard about a company in 
Canada which, in order to attract the best and brightest employees, was 
offering them the added perk that if you get sick and need surgery or 
need testing, we'll put you on a plane and fly you to the United States 
to get it done within 24 hours. That's what they were offering as part 
of their contract because you couldn't get that in Canada, working up 
there. But here if we emulate those systems, you go on lists.
  The seniors, having lived on this Earth for so long, they understand 
what's going on. They understand when you talk about cutting Medicare 
$500 billion what that means, that they're expected to do as Robert 
Reich recently said, You know, they're not going to get the health care 
they need at the end of their lives; it's too expensive. Basically, 
we'll let them die within a couple of months.
  If you remember the President's own town hall meeting at the White 
House, there was a lady there named Pam Sturm. She had said that her 
mother was 99, close to 100. Her own doctor said that he couldn't do 
any more unless she got a pacemaker, but that seemed awfully old to be 
getting a pacemaker. Everyone else said, Yeah, sure. Go for it, except, 
according to Ms. Sturm, the arrhythmia specialist. But he had never met 
her mother. Well, her doctor contacted the arrhythmia specialist and 
said, You really need to meet this lady before you make that medical 
call. Don't just do it off a list. You really need to meet her. He met 
her, and according to Pam, the specialist saw her and saw her joy of 
life, and he said that he, indeed, was going forward with the 
pacemaker. It's been 5 or 6 years since then. She's now 105 and doing 
well, according to Pam.
  Now the question she asked the President, she wanted to know under 
President Obama's plan what treatment someone elderly could have, and 
asked this question: ``Outside the medical criteria for prolonging the 
life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can 
be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of 
life? Or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?''
  I watched the video, and I typed this up so I could have every 
comment exactly right. President Obama said, ``We're suggesting--and 
we're not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-
life care.'' My English teacher mother taught eighth grade English for 
most of her adult life, actually taught me English my whole life and 
got frustrated with me quite a bit. But I know that she would outline 
that sentence and say, The President needs to clean that up, just as 
she did with some of mine.
  Anyway, he apparently is talking and thinking and trying to come up 
with an answer, kind of beating around the bush. But he goes on and 
says, ``A lot of that is going to have to be--we as a culture and as a 
society starting to make better decisions within our own families and--
and for ourselves.''
  The President goes on and says, ``But what we can do is make sure 
that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not 
making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or 
additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to 
improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know 
that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help; maybe you're 
better off not having the surgery but taking a painkiller.''
  That is the President's answer. How ironic. She had just explained 
that her mother had lived 5 or 6 years, a very joyful life after the 
pacemaker, and here the President is saying, Maybe you're better off 
not having that pacemaker surgery but just take a painkiller.
  The seniors get that. They understand what that means to them, and 
they don't need a death panel to read them the writing on the wall that 
comes from that kind of approach to health care.
  I had one senior say that she's concerned that they're cutting health 
care costs for seniors because they know that's where all the wisdom--
not all of it but a great deal of most of the wisdom resides. The 
longer you are

[[Page 25844]]

around, hopefully the greater your wisdom grows. I know from having 
been a judge that it is true. You live and you learn. Unfortunately, 
there are those who just live. Very unfortunate. Some never get to that 
learning part.
  But we have seniors who have lived and learned. They've seen the 
threats of fascism. They've seen the threats of communism. The greatest 
generation that provided us the protection and afforded us the 
opportunity to enjoy the blessings we enjoy, and now we say, ``You know 
what, maybe you're better off taking a painkiller''? What have we come 
to? You know, are we so self-absorbed, and we look at the money that 
we're throwing around from this body. We're supposed to have the purse 
strings and have some self-restraint as an obligation to those who sent 
us here, and yet we pass a bill to spend $770 million on wild horse 
habitat to buy them another area the size of West Virginia so they can 
roam around more when we have 3 million or so people, I understand, who 
have lost their habitats? Why aren't we taking care of their needs by 
creating new jobs and creating the ability to afford health care?
  My health care, my health insurance here in Congress, is part of the 
same big thick booklet that all other Federal employees get to have, 
but it was costing over $1,000 a month. It was just too much. So I 
elected to go with a health savings account, and it went to $300--well, 
it's under $300 a month, but a majority of that goes into my own health 
savings account. I've had some disagreements with the insurance 
company. I hear lots of people say, Everybody in America ought to be 
able to have what our Congress has for health care insurance.

                              {time}  2200

  My answer to that is you don't want my insurance. I'm changing it at 
the end of the year. I don't like it. I'm changing it at the end of the 
year. But what you want is not the insurance I've got right now, I 
don't think. What you want are my choices, because I've got a big, 
thick book like everybody else in here, and all the clerks, all the 
support staff and personnel, all the Federal employees have the same 
opportunities. It's not exclusive to Members of Congress.
  I do support I believe it's H.R. 615 that John Fleming came up with 
that a number of us have signed onto. I think it's a good bill, that 
Congress shouldn't pass any health care system created at least with 
legislation that we do not put ourselves on. It seems fair to me. But 
people should have choices, and that will bring about better health 
care options for people.
  But you have health insurance companies right now managing health 
care. It's not insurance. They're just taking care of people's health 
care. And it reminded me that--and someone, Madam Speaker, may be 
interested in taking this idea and actually going public and trying to 
sell the public on the idea. Maybe it will work. It sure worked in 
health care. And that is to tell people, You know what? Gasoline goes 
up. Sometimes it goes down, but it seems like more often it's going up. 
So why don't we tell the American public, Look, we will provide you 
what we will call gasoline insurance. You pay us a truckload of money 
every month, and we'll give you a copay and a deductible, and then we 
will pay your gasoline bill above that every month. How does that 
sound? Well, that's what people are doing with health insurance, and 
they're paying an awful lot of money.
  The same thing is true with Medicare and Medicaid. When you take the 
total expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid in the year 2007--we're 
still looking for 2008 full-year numbers, don't have them yet--we were 
approaching $10,000 average for every household in America to pay for 
Medicare and Medicaid. A small percentage of the population is on 
Medicare and Medicaid; yet the average is $10,000 for every household 
in America just to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. That just seems 
outrageous. There's an easier way. I filed a bill that has a solution. 
There are lots of other people that have suggested solutions.
  I want health insurance companies to get back into the business of 
insurance, and the way to do that is to have a high deductible policy 
and to provide tax incentives for companies to pay into employees' own 
personal health savings accounts, not like the old kind where if you 
don't use it by the end of the year, you lose it. No. If you don't use 
it, it rolls over to the next year, and it will accumulate and grow. 
And statisticians tell us that young people in their twenties and 
thirties, the vast majority of them, if they do that, will have such 
tremendous accumulated amounts in their health savings account by the 
time they reach retirement age that they won't need nor want Federal 
assistance with their health care decisions or payments because they 
can address it themselves with their own health care savings account 
and with the money that they have stored up. We provide tax advantages 
for businesses to do that.
  Now, I do agree with those on both sides of the aisle, and not 
everybody agrees but I think we do have some joint agreement, on the 
fact that we should have health insurance policies where the insurance 
company just can't up and cancel the insurance policy after you find 
out you have some dreaded disease. That seems grossly unfair. And I 
would agree that would be fair, and the Federal Government can do that. 
We can be about making sure there is a level playing field and there's 
fairness across the country. That's what we are supposed to do.
  This body was never intended to run everyone's life in the United 
States. But you give control, you give the cost to the Federal 
Government of all health care in America, well, that can't be paid for 
by the Federal Government unless they get it from the people living in 
America; so they're forced to tax Americans more to pay for their 
health care, and then you have the Federal Government, whose role is 
supposed to be that of referee, not only being referee but being the 
player.
  I mean, we are constantly, it seems, most every day having people 
come in who are having problems with the Veterans Administration or the 
Social Security Administration, and it is such a nightmare dealing with 
the Federal Government when they are the player and the referee. 
There's nobody else to go around. The Federal Government is it; 
whereas, if it took its role from our original Constitution, it would 
be the referee.
  I heard someone call into my friend Sean Hannity's show and he was 
berating health insurance companies, and he said, One of your precious 
health insurance companies had to settle a lawsuit for $3 million 
dollars and that's why the Federal Government ought to be providing the 
health insurance for health care.
  Well, he didn't know what he was talking about because what that 
shows is you don't want the Federal Government in the business of being 
both the player and the referee because they don't play fair when 
they're the only player and the referee. They treat you as some of our 
veterans have been treated or, should I say, mistreated. What you want 
is the Federal Government to be the referee.
  To me, if the insurance company got tagged for $3 million for some 
heinous way they handled somebody's situation, that means the Federal 
Government is doing its job. It provided an arena in the judiciary 
system where people could have a right of redress. That's what we are 
supposed to do. And by having such a heavy hammer as the arena of 
redress, forcing the free market players out there to play by the 
rules, to be fair and don't mistreat people, we do a better job when 
that is what we concentrate on; not telling automakers how to make cars 
or taking control of all these other areas that we seem to have taken 
control of in the last year or so.
  I want to go back to the comment of Thomas Jefferson: ``The natural 
course of things is for liberty to yield and the government to gain.''
  Of course, it was John Adams that commented, ``In my many years I 
have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a 
law firm, and three is a Congress.'' What a wise man John Adams was.
  With regard to health insurance, my bill that has been filed we have 
been

[[Page 25845]]

trying to get CBO scoring on. But it may be recalled that earlier this 
year after CBO came out with a score on a Democratic bill that upset 
the White House, the head of CBO, the Congressional Budget Office that 
does all the scoring that people constantly refer to as this unbiased 
source, the head was called over to the White House, called to the 
woodshed at the White House. And lo and behold, after that trip to the 
White House, it's amazing how CBO seemed to try to reach out and help 
the majority party, the majority in the House, the majority in the 
Senate, and the White House.

                              {time}  2210

  So Senator Baucus can rush in a bill, rush in something that is not 
even a bill, just a plan, and get them to score it. Well, I was told 
back in June that they would not score my health care bill unless I 
could get it into the form of a bill that could be filed here in the 
House.
  Well, I couldn't get my bill. I had the plan all drafted, what we 
wanted in it, and I could not get Legislative Counsel to put it into 
the form which is required in order to file it normally. And so we 
pushed and pushed. I told Newt Gingrich about my health care plan. He 
said you need to get that in bill form and get it scored. That should 
score. Well, I tried and tried. I was told, well, you are in the 
minority party and besides that, you are not on the Energy and Commerce 
Committee. So I got the highest-ranking Republican, Joe Barton, who was 
extremely helpful. He made the request. He and his office started 
pushing to get my plan into a bill form so I could file it. That wasn't 
good enough. We got other Republicans. We kept pushing and pushing. It 
took about a month, but we finally got it into bill form so we could go 
about getting it scored by CBO.
  We got it filed on July 31, and there are some amendments that we 
have prepared in this bill here that I am holding that we will file 
shortly. But we have been trying to get it scored by CBO. We made the 
official request August 19. We were told by CBO what we had heard from 
the Legislative Counsel Office, you are not in the majority. We knew 
that. I'm smarter than I look, perhaps. Then we were told, and you are 
not on the committee of jurisdiction, Energy and Commerce. So we got 
again Ranking Member Joe Barton to assist and make the request. That 
was done in September. And then we were told later, you know what, you 
don't have anybody from the joint commission, tax commission, who has 
made this request. So we got the highest-ranking Republican on the 
commission to make the request.
  Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson down in the Senate had requested a 
scoring as a Senate amendment, and she has not been successful in 
getting CBO to score that.
  What happened to the fair government we were going to get when this 
Obama administration took over? What happened to the fairness and the 
openness and treating both parties alike? We have been shut out of all 
negotiations. Unless the President has allowed a Republican into the 
White House to talk health care in the last few weeks, we had heard 
that it had been since March since a Republican had been allowed in.
  When he stood there at that second level during the joint session and 
said, Look, if you have solutions, my door is always open. Well, lots 
of us have filed bills. Lots of other Republicans have plans that they 
would like to get into bills, but they can't get Legislative Counsel's 
assistance. I am still plugging to get CBO's assistance to score my 
bill. But amazingly, they fall prey to the gimmickry of the Baucus bill 
of saying, oh, well, 10 years of revenue and 5 or 6 years of cost may 
come close to balancing out and only costing the country just under 
$900 billion. But as we know, that has been bumped up to over $1 
trillion. What happened to the openness and fairness? We have 
solutions. We held them up so the President would see we have 
solutions. We would love to talk to him, to someone drafting the bills, 
because they are good ideas.
  As I mentioned back during the days when I was on the active deacon 
status of my church, sometimes people would say we all ought to be of 
the same mind here in this body. And my comment was, unless one person 
has a 100 percent lock on God's truth all the time, we ought to listen 
to each other. In a deacon body, you need to do so prayerfully and 
seeking truth in God's grace and help. In this body, it wouldn't hurt 
to do that either. We ought to listen to somebody. There seems to be 
such an atmosphere of arrogance when someone will say that there is not 
one single thing that nearly half of the Congress can contribute.
  We all have basically the same number of constituents. There are the 
same number of constituents who elected Speaker Pelosi that elected me 
from my district. But it means just under half of the country is now 
not allowed input into the bills that are being passed and put together 
in this body. We have some proposed solutions, and the great thing is, 
as I have continued to talk to Democrats and Republicans, I find new 
things that will make my bill better.
  So one of the things that we deal with is this issue of people owning 
their own policy. That is required in my bill. An employer will have 
the tax advantage, the business expense, of paying for employees' 
health care insurance, but that will change in the respect that it will 
now be the employee's policy. So that means if the employee goes 
elsewhere or is fired, the business goes out of business, it is still 
the employee's policy and they can keep paying. We will get rid of 
COBRA. I saw that after I left the Bench and started running for 
Congress. My health care was going to go up so dramatically under COBRA 
that I couldn't afford it. My wife and I cashed out every asset we had 
except our home in order to make the run for Congress. So I do know 
something about sacrifice. It is kind of tough when you know you can't 
provide your children what you know you could have if you had stayed in 
the private sector, but that is what we did.
  I came representing my constituents with their expectation that 
everybody, as Speaker Pelosi and President Obama and Senator Reid have 
promised, that everybody would have input, and we have been shut out. 
It really is a tragedy.
  For seniors, since Medicare came into existence, seniors have never 
had complete coverage nor control of their own health care. The 
Government has had that control. They would have to find out if the 
Government was going to cover a medication or a procedure. They would 
have to find out from the government. The only thing worse I can 
imagine would be if we had a system like Canada or England where the 
government puts you on a list. And as one individual told me from 
Canada, that his father needed bypass surgery and he went on a list. He 
was told we do make adjustments in the lists based on our own 
determination. I can just picture some guy in a cubicle looking at the 
list, I think I will move this guy, not this one. He said he guessed 
wrong with my dad. He needed the bypass surgery very quickly, he didn't 
get it, and he died on the list, waiting to get bypass surgery for a 
number of months.
  We want people to control their own destiny and have access to 
affordable health care. I saw across America it was currently costing 
over $10,000; in 2007, it had gone from $8,500 to $9,200 a household. 
For every household in America, on average they were paying nearly 
$10,000 to cover the people on Medicare and Medicaid.
  We would be better off to say to our beloved seniors, you know what, 
we can do better if we just pay for what you need and we put cash money 
in your Health Savings Account. If you are an individual living alone, 
$2,500, if it is two or more, $3,500 in your household Health Savings 
Account, and then we will buy you health insurance to cover everything 
over that.

                              {time}  2220

  You control the first amount, up to $2,500 or $3,500, with a debit 
card that is coded so it will only pay for health care treatments, 
medications, over the counter, prescription drugs, the things you need 
for your health care; and then

[[Page 25846]]

health insurance, a private health insurance company, would provide 
insurance for everything over that that was not elective. We're not 
going to pay for liposuction, but if it's not elective, then it would 
take care of it. We're better off doing that for seniors; then they 
have absolute control of their own destiny and they have full coverage 
so people like seniors and our families would not have to buy 
supplemental Medicare coverage.
  I know that scares AARP. The loss of revenue would be just so 
traumatic to AARP. I get it. I understand that. But it would be better 
for AARP's members if they didn't have to buy the supplemental coverage 
from AARP, if they didn't have to buy wraparound coverage from some 
outside source, if we took care of it and gave them what they deserve 
for handing us the greatest country with the greatest freedoms in the 
history of the world. We owe that to them. That's what we owe to those 
who have gone on before us.
  To those who are coming behind, my heart breaks. We're spending money 
like it grows on trees. Of course we're printing it like it grew on 
trees. Instead, we're cutting down massive forests and printing it. 
Chairman Bernanke told us he wasn't monetizing the debt, and we find 
out it appears the Federal Reserve is buying our debt with newly 
printed money. I wish that we could get Madam Speaker to bring the bill 
to the floor that has over 300 cosponsors--it only takes 218 to pass--
that would require an audit of the Federal Reserve, but we can't get 
that to the floor.
  In any event, we owe future generations so much better than we're 
giving them. And I just keep thinking about how absurd, if a parent 
brought a bunch of kids and grandkids into a bank and said, I need a 
loan because I can't stop spending, I'm just spending wildly, it's more 
than I earn, it's more than I could ever get, but I need a loan so I 
can just keep spending--you know, $25 million on rare dogs and cats 
that don't even live in the United States, $770 million for wild 
horses, $400 billion for a land omnibus bill, $800 billion for a 
stimulus package that won't stimulate anything, hasn't saved jobs, it 
doesn't appear, just a few thousands of jobs while there has been 
millions lost; $800 billion for that? And don't think that I exclude 
the TARP bailout, that ridiculous bill that never should have been 
passed through this House 1 year ago. That's part of the problem, 
spending money like crazy.
  Can you imagine that parent saying, give me the loan, and see all my 
kids and grandkids back here? I am going to swear that when I'm gone 
and quit spending--because I'm dead--they're going to pay it all back 
to you. That is what we are doing. We owe them so much better after 
what we got in this country, and we're leaving them debt they will 
never be able to pay off and they will have to pass to their children 
and their children's children.
  With us and this arrogant spending that's going on in this body--and 
I know it didn't just start with the Democratic majority, but they've 
kicked it in exponentially since taking the majority and especially 
since January. They won the majority on promising America they would 
bring down the spending, and it's been exponential, it seems, since 
then. We owe future generations so much better.
  So we're told, gee, the initial H.R. 3200, it was probably going to 
cost $1 to $2 trillion. We were told the Baucus bill is going to be 
over $1 trillion. Folks, the last numbers we were able to get is around 
119 million households in America, you divide 119 million households 
into $1.19 trillion--which is a conservative estimate of any of the 
Democrats' bills--and what you have is an additional $10,000 per 
household for their health care bill that will not cover all Americans, 
but will cover a lot of illegal immigrants in this country. My bill 
deals with that.
  By the way, this bill I have before me, it would be a choice for 
seniors; if you want to keep Medicare, keep it, but I know in my heart 
that when you see what an advantage it would be to have the government 
give you a health savings account with cash in it and the government 
pay for the insurance to cover anything over that, that's the way 
people will want to go. And then eventually we will be able to bring 
down dramatically the cost. And as the young people move up, it costs 
less and less and we get this spending under control.
  But one of the things that we've heard is about how many people come 
into this country knowing they've got a health care problem, knowing 
they may need heart surgery, come in, present to the hospital, get 
heart surgery. See, you can do that in this country; you can't 
necessarily do that in other countries. But we've got to rein that in.
  In my bill, there is a specific provision that says, if you want a 
visa to come into this country--whether it's a migrant worker visa or 
whether it's a travel visa or whether it's coming in for some extended 
stay to work here--you have to show that you will be covered by health 
insurance either by your employer, by the household in which you're 
going to reside, that you will be part of their health insurance, you 
have to show that document or you don't get a visa. It is a matter of 
national security that we not let people coming in bankrupt the 
country. We've got to get this under control.
  The law of the land is--and has been and allowed to stand--if you're 
illegally in this country and you present for health care, you'll get 
it. We believe in abiding by the law, and so that will be addressed, 
that will be taken care of. You will get the health care. But because 
it is, again, a matter of national security that you not be allowed to 
bankrupt our country, then if you're here illegally and get free health 
care, then you will be deported. And since we can't let you keep coming 
in to bankrupt this country, if you come back in, then it would be a 
crime. It's not considered a crime right now, but if you come in 
illegally, get free health care, and then after being deported come 
back in, that would be a crime under this bill.
  Another thing we need, though, is transparency. These are all part of 
Republican solutions. And it's in this bill. It's in other people's 
bills. Transparency. People don't know what it costs for health care. I 
have seniors get scared. They say, wow, that costs $30,000? Oh, my 
goodness. Thank goodness for Medicare because I only have $10,000 in 
the bank. I could never have paid for that. Well, guess what? It didn't 
cost $30,000. It probably didn't cost more than $3,000 for that $30,000 
in care.
  As I've mentioned before, I know of a specific instance where $10,000 
in 2 days of hospital care, ambulance, doctors, testing was paid in 
full by a health insurance company for $800. Americans ought to be able 
to do the same thing. It shouldn't just be Blue Cross or some other 
health care insurance company. Americans ought to be able to get the 
same good deal that insurance companies or the government can get, and 
they could do that if they had their health savings account and start 
saving. And even if someone is self-employed or wants to put in money 
of their own, they can do that. That's pretax money if they're willing 
to do that. Those are the kind of things that would help us.
  With regard to transparency, under this bill, health care providers 
would be required to provide you the exact cost of the treatment of 
whatever it is you're getting in the way of health care from the health 
care provider before the treatment.

                              {time}  2230

  They also, under my bill, would have the right to know if you are 
providing that service to anyone else cheaper. They have the right to 
know how much it is. Chances are, if a health care provider is 
providing it cheaper to one than they will with a health savings 
account or somebody with cash, then that person with cash or the health 
savings account will take their little debit card down the road, like 
we used to do growing up. The truth is we used to go back and forth 
between doctors. My parents were looking for a good deal and didn't 
have money to waste, and so you knew what things cost and we might go 
to a different doctor. But you might know in advance. That's the

[[Page 25847]]

way it ought to be now. You ought to know, and you might get the same 
deal, Madam Speaker, that Blue Cross gets. That's in this bill.
  Another thing would be that insurance companies--and that's in this 
bill, and John Shadegg is the one that talked about it so adamantly for 
so long. It's a good idea. Insurance companies should be able to cross 
State lines.
  I have been looking on the Internet lately for some new term life 
insurance--and I am not giving out my e-mail address, because I sure 
don't want any more of the spam that I keep getting--but you can get 
that online. People are competing across the country, and there are 
some very good rates on life insurance.
  You ought to be able to do that with health care insurance. People 
ought to be able to get as good of health care plans no matter who they 
are. But, unfortunately, under H.R. 3200, and basically the Baucus 
bill, as I understand it--I haven't read it like I have 3200--you will 
not have a lot of choices. There will be one basic plan. There will be 
one enhanced plan. There will be one premium plan. It may be that you 
are in an area of the country where you only have one policy, the basic 
policy. The terms will be dictated by the Federal Government.
  It's not choices. You may have a number of companies initially that 
offer those, but if there is a public option, then, just like with the 
flood insurance, the Government will put private insurance companies 
out of business and you will have one choice of company; that's the 
Federal Government. You will have one plan, and that's what's dictated. 
My bill avoids that problem.
  There are lots of solutions out there, but I do want people to know 
that, again, when they are told that you can keep your own insurance 
company, here is the House bill here, 3200, Section 102, the 
grandfathered health insurance coverage means an individual has 
insurance coverage. In order to keep this, you have to meet these 
requirements:
  The insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any 
individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is 
on or after the first day of Y1. You can't add a single individual to 
your policy. If you do, you will lose the policy. It's a retirement 
medical policy, and one more person retires and goes on, that's gone. 
You are back under the Federal bill here.
  Then the second is the issuer does not change any of its terms or 
conditions, including benefits and cost sharing. That means nobody is 
going to be keeping their own health insurance policy is exactly what 
it means.
  The other stuff, even if you take out the public option, this kind of 
stuff that you can find in our 1,000-page bill--and I bet this kind of 
stuff is in the Baucus Senate bill, studying reports. It shall, the 
commissioner, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of 
Labor, shall conduct a study of the large group insured, self-insured 
employer health care markets.
  It will include types of employers by key characteristics, including 
size that purchase insured products versus those that self-insure. 
Similarities and differences between typical insured, self-insured 
health plans. The financial solvency and capital reserve levels of 
employers that self-insure by employer size. The risk of self-insured 
employers not being able to pay obligations or otherwise becoming 
financially insolvent. You get that, being able to pay obligations.
  That means we are going to send in--we have never balanced anything 
around here for very long. We are going to send in a Federal agent to 
help people in private business, that we think you are not making good 
decisions and so we are going to help you run your business because you 
are not making good calls. We are doing a study. I mean, this opens the 
door for the Federal Government to come in and service people in a way 
they don't want to be serviced.
  We don't need the Federal takeover of health care. We just don't. We 
need a referee. We do not need the Federal Government to be the player. 
That's the way it always works out.
  I would encourage, Madam Speaker, anyone in this body or anybody 
across America who would like to know exactly what the President's plan 
says, because he has referred to it constantly, my bill, my plan, this 
bill, this plan, contact the White House if they would be interested 
and ask for a copy of the President's bill. Anybody on this floor can 
do that, anybody across America. What you will find is what we finally 
found--the President has no bill. There is no bill. There is no 
President's bill, nothing there. All those claims about my bill, this 
bill, my bill, it's not there, doesn't exist. They finally admitted it.
  Madam Speaker, I am so hopeful that Americans will speak out and make 
sure that their Representatives or their Senators and the President 
know how they feel about the government taking over another aspect of 
their lives, and I hope and pray that doesn't happen.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back.

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