Health Care Reform

Statement

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Mr. AKIN. Well, good evening, Mr. Speaker and my friends. We have just heard from the Democrats talking about their new foray into solving all the problems with health care, and boy, did it sound good to me. I have to say it really sounded good.

The promises, essentially what I was hearing talk about, first of all, the costs are coming down and you're going to get free medical care and the quality of the care is going to go up. And gosh, if you were given a proposal like that, I don't see why anybody wouldn't say, Yeah, let's just march right ahead with socialized medicine. Let's let the government run it because they're going to bring the costs down, they're going to give you free medical care, and you're going to get even better coverage than you get now.

I also was hearing the fact that they talked about the muck of our health care system and how bad the health care system is, and how, if we don't immediately pass this legislation, that things are going to get even worse. But what we have in front of us is this absolutely euphoric view of a great health care system.

Well, first thing off that strikes me is a little bit of a problem with common sense, the first is, if our health care system were so bad, then it would seem like, to me, that Americans would be going to some foreign country to get their health care. But what I'm observing is that if I got sick--and I have been sick--the place that I'd like to be treated is in good old U.S.A. I don't want to go to Canada. I don't want to go to Great Britain. I don't want to go to France or Sweden. I don't want to go to Russia. No, I'd like to be sick right here in this country.

So it strikes me that a health care system that most people even around the world recognize as probably the most sophisticated and the best quality health care system in the world, we're saying that it is full of muck and that the system has to be completely changed around.

And so it's okay if you want to believe these promises, that what's going to happen when the government takes over the health care system is that it's going to cost less money. The trouble is the Congressional Budget Office doesn't say that and the estimates of the costs don't say that. And the States that have tried using the same approach that's being proposed here nationally, they don't say that either, because those States are almost bankrupt for trying to do this kind of a system, and yet, we're going to try to copy those bad examples.

We are just actually a few weeks, a couple, 3 weeks away from dealing with the other big problem that the administration has identified, which is the fact that the climate and the Earth is going to get worse and worse, hotter and hotter, and we are going to melt down. So we've got to deal with the problem of global warming by, what would you expect, a very, very large tax increase, the largest tax increase in the history of our country. I guess it was about $787 billion. That was the largest tax increase that we've done. We did that.

It was an 1,100-page bill that was brought to the floor, and then at 3 o'clock in the morning, in a special committee hearing, another 300 pages of extra text were added to the 1,100 pages, and the 300 pages being in the form of amendments to had to be collated and put into the 1,100 pages. So, as we were debating this wonderful bill on the floor, they were busy trying to collate this amendment that had been passed, 300-page amendment, at 3 o'clock in the morning. They're busy trying to collate that. So, as we're debating it here on the floor about to take a vote on it, there isn't even a copy of the bill that we're going to vote on.

So here we go again. Perhaps we did learn from our last experience that it's easier to pass something that people don't know what it is. And so here we go now with about 1,000 pages of bill in terms of what we're going to do to have the government take over 20 percent of the U.S. economy. The health care business is about 20 percent of the money that's spent in America. It's about 20 percent, or close to it, of our economy, and now we're going to have the government take--well, if you take a look at it, about half of it the government's already running with Medicare and Medicaid. So we've had some experience with the government running these programs.

The Medicaid program, of course, is noted for the tremendous amount of fraud and abuse that it has, but if you add the Medicaid and Medicare money, if you take a look at the total money we spent in health care, government's doing about half of it right now, but we're talking about having the government do the rest of it. And so that's where we're going, and I think we need to take a look at that.

When the government does take over various things, what tends to happen?

Is it noted for its efficiency? Well, usually what happens when the government takes over programs is you get tremendous excess in amount of spending. You get a lot of bureaucratic rationing. These are typical things in government programs. There's an inefficiency and a degraded quality. Those are the kinds of things that history would tell us happens when the government takes something over. That's what's being proposed here. Make no doubt about it, what's being proposed is the government is going to take over the health care system. And that has left people with this particular quip that, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it gets to be free. Then you will see what real expense means.

Well, let's take a look at how well this has worked in the past. One way you can tell whether it's a good idea to make a move or to do something particularly is to take a look at other people who have tried the same thing.

The State of Massachusetts decided in 2006 that they were going to require universal health care coverage that's very much like the current Democrat plan where people are required to purchase specific levels of health insurance.

Well, here's what happened. Health care costs have risen 42 percent since 2006--42 percent increase. Now we were just hearing from the Democrats that this thing isn't going to hardly cost anything. This is going to be a break-even because there's so much efficiency.

Well, what sort of efficiency is a 42 percent increase? And yet, health care access is down and the patients have to wait more than 2 months to try to get to see a doctor. So, is this the kind of thing that we think is going to improve what most people think is the best health care system in the world?

Health care costs now up in Massachusetts, they're 133 percent of the national average. Well, that doesn't seem to me to be producing these glorious results that I hear the Democrats talk about.

I just don't think that these people may have gotten over their euphoria from just managing to put 1,100 pages, with 300 pages that nobody could read or know what it was, and pass that within a day of the three o'clock in the morning when they made the amendments.

So here we go again. We're going to see if we can't pass another 1,000 or 2,000-page bill this week or next week--and it's a lot easier to pass them when people don't read them.

I'm joined here this evening by some very, very good friends of mine and some people who've done a number of years of study on the health care issue. I think that we need to talk a little bit about this. Before we go racing off to make some snap decisions, I think that we need to do that.

I'm joined by a number of my colleagues. I would yield to the gentleman. If you want some charts, help yourself.

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