Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Speaker, the distinguished minority leader has just expressed the desire of his party to engage us in health care reform, and I'm so gratified and happy to hear him say that. Similarly, the distinguished minority leader of the Senate, who is both my Senator and my constituent, has spent the last few days in the Senate talking about that same desire, to help us move forward in addressing what we all know is an unsustainable and dysfunctional health care delivery system.

The Senator spoke last Friday, and he said, ``Americans want reform that addresses the high cost of care and gives everyone access to quality care. In America in 2009, doing nothing is simply not an option. We must act and we must act decisively. The question is not whether to reform health care; the question is how best to reform health care.''

None of us in either body on either side of the aisle will argue with that statement.

Unfortunately, in the remainder of the distinguished Senate minority leader's statement, there is not the first idea about how to do that. Despite his teasing us that he is going to offer solutions, they're not. In fact, what he does is pretty similar to what the distinguished minority leader of the House just did, which was to echo the themes of a talking point paper provided by Frank Luntz, the Republican message person, which basically said the Republicans cannot afford to allow Democrats to have a victory in health care. They can't allow us to get something done for the American people. And, therefore, they are going to respond by criticizing everything we are doing as a government takeover of health care. In fact, in the distinguished Senate minority leader's statement, some version of government takeover is mentioned 11 times in 1 1/2 half pages. So we know where they're coming from.

But the arguments that are raised are also things that require scrutiny, and as we move forward in this debate, we need to examine all of them.

For instance, the Senator says, ``When most companies want to raise money, they have to show they are viable and their products and services are a worthwhile investment.''

Again, nobody can argue with that. That means adding value.

``Apply this model to health care, and the government would be able to create the same kind of uneven playing field that would, in all likelihood, eventually wipe out competition, thus forcing millions of people off the private health plans they already have and which the vast majority of them very much like.''

You know, when insurance companies are forced to compete, they do very well. Senator McConnell and I have a common constituent, the Humana Corporation, a great corporation. When they're forced to compete, they figure out how to add value. And they're doing that right now. They are doing it with the Medicare Advantage program.

When insurance companies are forced to compete, they compete well. Right now they're not forced to compete. What many of us are proposing is that we create a public competition for them, make them compete with the public plan. And unlike what Senator McConnell says, if they are unable to compete, it won't be because of an unfair advantage; it will be because they are not providing the kind of coverage at the cost that the American people want. If American people want to stay in their private plans under the proposals that we're advancing, they will be able to do that. We're not forcing anyone out. Right now most Americans don't have a choice, and we are trying to provide that choice through a public plan.

In the Senator's statement, he says: ``This is how a government plan would undercut private health care plans, forcing people off the plans they like and replacing those plans with plans they like less.''

They're not going to be in plans they like less. They will choose the plan they like more.

"That is when the worst scenario would take shape, with Americans subjected to bureaucratic hassles, hours spent on hold, waiting for a government service representative to take a call, restrictions on care and, yes, lifesaving treatment and lifesaving surgeries denied or delayed.''

It's a nice scare tactic. Unfortunately, what he is describing is what often happens right now in the private insurance system with doctors spending endless hours trying to argue with bureaucracies about whether certain treatments or certain procedures will be covered. So what we're trying to do is to end that and to provide competition that will end that.

Finally, the Senator says, ``The American people want health care reform, but creating a government bureaucracy that denies, delays and rations health care is not the reform they want.'' I agree with that. I agree with that.

Then he says, ``They don't want the people who brought us the Department of Motor Vehicles making life-and-death decisions for them, their children, their spouses, and their parents.'' Well, that's a cute line, very clever.

Unfortunately, you know, the Federal Government didn't create the Department of Motor Vehicles, but the Federal Government did create Medicare, Medicare which now serves 40 million Americans, disabled and old, and which does a very, very good job of doing that.

So I look forward to the debate we're going to continue to have with the other side on how best to create health care reform.

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