Cover the Uninsured Week

COVER THE UNINSURED WEEK -- (House of Representatives - May 03, 2006)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to address the most pressing problem facing our country and the health care system of our country: the growing number of uninsured.

Since 2000, the number of uninsured has grown by more than 10 percent as an additional 1 million Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured each year. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently reported that the number of individuals without health insurance in this country rose to 46 million this year. This is a problem that we literally cannot afford not to address.

In my State of Texas, we have the unfortunate distinction of ranking number one in the country for our level of uninsured, which has reached crisis proportions. Twenty-five percent of Texans are uninsured, compared with 15.7 percent of Americans nationwide. Twenty-two percent of children in our State are uninsured, compared to 12 percent of American children nationwide.

The increase in the number of uninsured is due in part to the changing nature of health care in this country. Gone are the days when we could rely on our employers to provide comprehensive health insurance for us and our families. While more than 90 percent of firms with more than 50 employees still offer employer-sponsored coverage, many smaller firms have found they simply cannot afford to offer their employees health insurance. In fact, only 47 percent of firms with fewer than 10 employees offer employer-sponsored coverage.

We are proud that Texas is a small business State, but an unintended consequence is that many of our small business employees do not have access to affordable health insurance. The result is that many Texans, and folks throughout our Nation, have few choices for health insurance other than the individual market.

For American families near the poverty level, the cost of health insurance has to compete with the cost of putting food on your table or a roof over your heads, which is really no choice at all. The typical family of four at the poverty level brings home $20,000 a year. Given that private health insurance cost $9,000 a year in 2005, it is no surprise that more than half of Americans below the poverty level spent at least some or part of each year uninsured.

The plight of the uninsured should worry all Americans, as the uninsured have less access to care, become sicker, and impose tremendous costs on our health care system. The uninsured are less likely to seek preventative health care and only get care once their health problems reach emergency proportions. A recent study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 2,500 Texans die each year as a result of being uninsured. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the uninsured adults have postponed seeking health care because they could not afford it. Only 15 percent of individuals with health insurance have postponed care for this reason. The difference can literally be life or death.

For example, uninsured women with breast cancer have a 30 to 50 percent higher risk of dying from the disease than breast cancer patients with insurance, 30 percent higher than people with health insurance. Uninsured auto accident victims with trauma are 37 percent more likely to die from their injuries than their insured counterparts.

Everyone can agree that something must be done to stem the tide of the uninsured. Yet it is important that we put in place policies that not only increase the number of Americans with health insurance but also ensure that they have quality and comprehensive insurance.

Unfortunately, the health savings plans and association health plans supported by the administration and our Republican colleagues are not a silver bullet. The success of any health insurance plan lies in its ability to spread the risk. However, both the Health Savings Accounts and the AHP models would separate out the healthy and wealthy, leaving sicker and poorer Americans to fend for themselves in an individual health insurance market that is already out of reach for low-income Americans. This is not the way to ensure our citizens are healthy and productive members of society.

The Federal Government needs to renew its commitment to the most vulnerable members of our society. Faced with record levels of uninsured, we should be adding people to the Medicaid and S-CHIP rolls, not dropping them. We should expand the S-CHIP program to include parents of CHIP kids. That option alone would provide health insurance to 67 percent of CHIP parents in Texas.

We should restore funding for the Healthy Community Access Program, which in my community has helped enroll an additional 250,000 individuals in Medicaid and CHIP, while also directing the uninsured away from the ERs and toward a more appropriate health care home.

These are the programs that work, not HSAs and the AHPs that will place additional burdens on those who need help the most.

Mr. Speaker, if we are going to get this country's health care system out of the ditch, we have to first stop digging.

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