[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2904]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          BUYING INTO MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Grayson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Speaker, I have just introduced a simple 4-page bill 
that allows any American to buy into Medicare at cost. Let me explain 
why I have done that. I have five children. When one of my children was 
born, I found out from the insurance company that the insurance company 
would not pay for the birth of my child. I had what I thought was 
excellent health care coverage from this insurance company, but it 
turned out otherwise. As a result of that, I had to pay $10,000 for the 
birth of my child.
  You know, it could have been worse. Maybe I wouldn't have that 
$10,000. A lot of Americans face that situation when they have health 
care bills that their health insurance company won't cover. It could 
have been worse. I had twins who were born afterwards, who were born a 
month premature, spent weeks in the hospital. God only knows what those 
bills would have looked like. I probably would have been broke.
  But the fact is that I felt, like many Americans feel, that I had an 
adversarial relationship with my insurance company and that every penny 
they spent on my care was a penny less for their profits. And that is a 
fundamentally unfair situation that causes untold health care needs 
around this country that go unmet and, frankly, untold death.
  That's why we need another option. We need a public option. We're 
going to be seeing a Senate bill that doesn't have a public option. 
We're going to be seeing reconciliation that doesn't have a public 
option. But America needs a public option. That's why I've introduced 
this bill.
  There are other reasons as well. Another reason is that all across 
this country there are areas, including areas in Florida, where one or 
two private insurance companies dominate the market to the extent that 
they have 80 percent of all the insured in the area. There is no 
competition. It's a monopoly in the case of one. It's an oligopoly in 
the case of two. Either way, these insurance companies pretty much do 
whatever they want. They can offer you care or they deny you care. They 
can cut you off when you already have care. And they can charge you 
pretty much anything they want.
  Well, a public option would change that. In an area where one company 
had 80 percent of the market, suddenly there would be an alternative. 
Where two companies have 80 percent of the market, suddenly there would 
be an alternative. That alternative is an alternative that is already 
used by one-eighth of our population. That alternative is Medicare.
  This simple bill would allow anybody--any American, any permanent 
resident--to buy into Medicare at cost. And what it does is it takes 
this enormously valuable public resource called the Medicare Provider 
Network and makes it available to all Americans. We've spent billions 
putting together a Medicare Provider Network that stretches from Nome, 
Alaska, all the way to Key West, Florida. We've spent billions doing 
that, and yet only one-eighth of the population can use it.
  The most expensive part of preparing a health care plan for any 
American in any location is to set up the provider network, hundreds 
and hundreds of contracts with hospitals, with specialists, with 
nurses, with testing companies. All these things have to be done before 
you actually serve the first patient.
  Well, we have a system like that called Medicare, and yet it's open 
to only one-eighth of the population. It's as if we're saying that only 
one-eighth of the population, senior citizens, can drive on Federal 
highways. That's how important the Medicare provider network is, and 
that's why we have to open it to everybody.
  This is not a plan for subsidies. Everyone would have to pay their 
own cost. This is not a plan that's meant to help anybody, except for 
the people who cannot otherwise get insurance, or people like me, who 
simply don't trust the insurance companies anymore because of the raw 
treatment that we've received.
  Let's face it, it's never going to be any different. The insurance 
companies are always going to look for ways to chintz you. They're 
always going to look for ways to charge you more and give you less, and 
the difference is what they call profit. And that's a system that a lot 
of people just can't accept anymore. They just don't want it anymore.
  And for those people who have it in their mind that there will be 
some kind of government death panels, what about the real death panels 
that exist in this company--the insurance company death panels; the 
ones that look for rescission when you get sick, the ones that top you 
out at some small amount of benefits when you have some terminally ill 
condition. These are the real death panels in this country. And that's 
why we need a public option.
  So I'm asking the Speaker and the leadership, if we have to vote on 
this Senate bill that doesn't have a public option in it, if we have to 
vote on this reconciliation amendment that doesn't have a public 
option, isn't it time that we finally did something good for America? 
Isn't it time that we gave all Americans the right to buy into a public 
plan like this? Isn't it in fact past time that we did something like 
that? And what's the harm?
  I say to those people on the other side of the aisle, if you don't 
want to buy into the public option, that's fine. But don't prevent me 
and my family and the ones who I love from doing the same. Let us have 
our alternative. And remember what you said so many times before: you 
say the government can't do anything right. Well, let's see. Let's see 
right now. Let's let people buy into the public option through this 
bill, H.R. 4789, and we'll give it a shot.

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