Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. HODES. Thank you.

I am glad to be with you tonight to talk about what is perhaps the most critical issue we face as a nation if we are to thrive, if our economy is to prosper again, and if we are to deliver to the American people, people of my State of New Hampshire, what they have been long asking for, which is real reform on health care.

We are going to lower costs for everybody, we're going to deliver better quality care, and we are going to put the people of this country back in control of their health care. Because right now, with all the noise that's been out there--and you've referenced the notion that's been put forward of a government takeover of health care. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. But at the moment what is between us and our health care are insurance company bureaucrats who are making life-and-death decisions and are able to discriminate against the American people based on profits for the insurance companies. That simply has to end.

I'm going to tell you a story. It's a story of how change happens. It's a story of tragedy and it's a story, ultimately, of triumph. But it talks to the issue of what kind of situation we're in with our insurance companies.

In my district in New Hampshire at Plymouth State College there was a young woman named Michelle Morse. She was in her senior year. Beautiful young lady, 3.6 grade average, an honor student. She was looking forward to graduating at the end of her senior year and moving on with a happy life.

She woke up one day with a stomachache. By the next morning, she was diagnosed with cancer--serious, aggressive, fast-moving cancer. And her doctors said to her, You've got to leave school and take a leave of absence in order to get treated for your cancer.

And so she and her family--because she was on her family's insurance policy--went to their agent. They called their insurance company and they explained the situation and they said Michelle has to leave school to get treated for cancer.

What came back from the insurance company was, Well, that's up to you. That's fine. If Michelle needs to leave school, she leaves school. Let her take a leave of absence. But if she's not a full-time student, if she takes a leave of absence, she will no longer be covered by your insurance.

The Morse family couldn't believe it. But, sure enough, buried in the print of that insurance policy was exactly that--unless Michelle was a full-time student, she wouldn't be covered.

So they made the difficult decision. Michelle stayed in school. She took three courses of chemotherapy. She finished with honors--an incredible achievement. And sadly, Michelle died.

Now her mother, Ann Marie Morse, is a teacher. She's a teacher that teaches elementary school kids. She had never been involved in politics a day in her life. But she decided that what happened to her daughter, what happened to her family, was wrong. She decided that she would make it her business to make sure that what happened would never happen to another family again.

Now this is just a very small slice of the larger debate about health care; a very small piece of what it takes.

So first, Ann Marie Morse, a teacher, went and lobbied everybody in Concord, New Hampshire, the capital of New Hampshire and got a State law passed, thanks to her efforts, that said college students can take a 1-year leave of absence without getting knocked off their

parents' insurance policies. But that wasn't enough because it's Federal law that controls. ERISA controlled. And ERISA needed to be amended.

So I worked with Ann Marie Morse. We worked here in Congress on a bipartisan basis. We got every health insurance association, we got everybody involved, because even the health insurance companies knew that what happened to Michelle Morse was wrong and it shouldn't be allowed to happen. Even the insurance companies knew that.

So with Ann Marie Morse in the gallery of this House, the House by unanimous vote passed Michelle's Law to allow college students to take a 1-year leave of absence for serious medical conditions without getting knocked off their insurance. Because the Morse family had nowhere to go because now Michelle couldn't find other insurance. She had a preexisting condition. And they couldn't afford private insurance--single, private, individual insurance--because it was just priced too far out of the market because the insurance companies had a monopoly. There was nowhere to go. She couldn't get Medicaid. She couldn't get Medicare. She couldn't find any alternative. She had to stay in school.

So when the House passed it, then the Senate passed the bill. President Bush signed it into law. And this Friday, October 9, Michelle's Law becomes the law of the land. So that what happened to Michelle Morse will never again happen to any college student in this country.

Thousands, thousands of college students are affected. Mike Castle on the other side of the aisle was the cosponsor. He understood. A responsible Republican understood that what was wrong shouldn't happen again. So he worked on the law because he had somebody in his district who it happened to. I'm betting if we all look, all my colleagues who are here tonight, we'd find people in our districts, other people that this has happened to.

It took 2 years to get that done, this small slice of the health care problem. Two years. And now we face a bigger test. Are we going to hold the insurance companies responsible for reasonable action on the part of the insurance companies?

The insurance companies now are regulated by a patchwork of 50 different State rules and regulations. Fifty different schemes for regulating. We are talking about, finally, for the first time, saying to the insurance companies, as the people of the United States of America, No discrimination for preexisting conditions like diabetes or heart condition or cancer, no dropping your coverage because you become sick--both of the things that happened to Michelle Morse, which Michelle's Law is designed to affect for that small slice of college kids.

No refusal to renew your coverage if you paid in full and become ill. No more job or life decisions made based on loss of coverage. No need to change doctors or plans if you like the coverage you have. No copays for preventive and wellness care. No excessive out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles, or copays. Yearly caps on what you pay, but no yearly or lifetime cost caps on what insurance companies cover.

These are reasonable rules that we are finally going to set down on the insurance companies. Reasonable rules. The kind of rules of the road that the American people deserve and that our health care reform plan is going to deliver so that what happened to Michelle Morse will never happen to any family or anybody, whether they're in or out of college. It's time for real reform.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, John Sarbanes of Maryland.

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Mr. HODES. I think it's a very important discussion because really what we're talking about, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, is consumer choice. It is a hallowed principle here in this country. The American consumers want choice. And what we are doing here with the House bill is really designing a uniquely American system that delivers more choice, more competitiveness, and more control for consumers of health care. It's especially important in my State of New Hampshire because in New Hampshire, small business is big business. Some 65 percent of people in New Hampshire are employed by small businesses.

What has happened in small business on the health care front is a lot worse. As bad as it is for many individuals and big businesses, for small businesses, it's a lot worse. In the same time that individual premiums have gone up 100 percent or 117 percent, for small businesses in this country premiums are up 129 percent. Since the early 1990s when 68 percent of small businesses offered health care, we are now seeing that drop off; whereas today it's about 38 percent of small businesses who are able to offer health care to their employees because the costs are simply too high. There is not enough choice in the marketplace.

So what we are doing is what many of us talked about to our constituents, which is saying we think that you folks ought to have the same kind of choices that we have as Members of Congress. If an exchange, the choice, is good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for you. And what the exchange does is finally deliver stability and security and choice. Stability, security, and choice.

It's the security of knowing that if a small business can't find private insurance that they like--and, by the way, what's really critical to say is if people like their insurance, there is nothing in this bill, nothing that says you've got to give up your insurance. You keep your insurance if you like it. But if you don't, you have the option. You have a choice and the security of knowing that there is a consumer choice provision. It's called public option, consumer choice, available to you that will insure you on a level playing field with competitive provisions and competitive costs that means you will be able to find insurance. That's what is critical.

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Mr. HODES. Thank you. And that's exactly the point. We are simply saying that it's time for everybody in this country to have real choice in their health care because I trust the people of this country to make good choices when they have the choices to make. And I find it somewhat surprising that my colleagues in this Chamber, most of them across the aisle, say it's good enough for me, but what I've got, oh, no, you don't need it, you don't want it. Let's just leave it all to the private insurance companies. Let's just leave it all there.

I don't know what's going on with that, but I would think certainly choice is the right way to go. And I can't imagine any constituent, any person we represent, wouldn't want more choice in their health care because we thrive on choice, and our competitive system in this country, our economy thrives on competition. So having it out there where private insurance companies, now there are some real rules. Folks, you're going to have to compete on a level playing field with the people of this country. Here's our choice, and the people of the country get to make the choice.

I think it's a really important statement that we are making in terms of trusting the American people to make the right choices if they have the right choices, and it's high time that we gave it to them.

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Mr. HODES. Thank you. I want to speak to the importance of finding common ground if we can find it, because health care is not a partisan issue as far as I'm concerned and I think most of us are concerned. Democrats need doctors and hospitals. Republicans need doctors and hospitals. Independents need doctors and hospitals. We are all in this health care system together. And I would hope that my colleagues on the other side can begin to put aside the name calling and fear tactics that have characterized so much of the debate and speak directly to the real needs of the American people for a system that delivers stability and security, that delivers real choice in health care, that keeps the good that we have in the system because we have terrific hospitals and terrific doctors who are laboring under real impediments to delivering high-quality care.

If you think about what the typical doctor has to go through to fill out the forms for the insurance companies, and the stories that I have heard from my

physicians in New Hampshire about the advocacy and fighting that they have to do just to deliver basic health care to their patients because of all the forms and the paperwork and the bureaucracy and administrative costs that go into it, you begin to get a picture of why costs are going up so high and what we have to do for our doctors to help them deliver better care.

One of the things that we haven't talked about in the bill is an important investment in cost-saving measures like medical information technology. Currently, many of our doctors, most of our doctors and hospitals, are dealing with paper records. They're dealing with paper records and there is not a coordination of records. It has led to less quality of care than we could have. And what we are going to do in this bill is make significant investments in information technology that help all our doctors and our hospitals deliver better care.

Now, my mom is 83 years old. The last time I talked to her, she was up to about six different doctors for her various needs and ailments. As far as I can tell, she has to walk from office to office carrying her records and her x rays and her pills in bags under her arm, trying to tell one doctor what the other doctor said or did, and you can see in there the kind of problems that our current system has.

We have the ability to make an investment in medical records technology, which is going to deliver better care for everybody. It's an important part of the bill, and it's one of the things that has to happen to bring our system into the 21st century.

We're going to protect privacy. We're going to preserve patient confidentiality. But we are going to make the necessary investments to bring the medical records technology into a place where we reduce medical errors, which reduces costs for everybody and improves the quality of care throughout our system. It's a very important component of this bill. And I can't begin to think that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would object to making that kind of investment, because in the end, when we invest in health care reform and health insurance reform, two different things, by the way, when we invest in health care reform and health insurance reform, we save billions and billions and billions of dollars over time because the system, as it is, is unsustainable.

There are investments we have to make to make sure that our economy thrives and that we deliver choice, we deliver better care and better quality, and we put the American people in control of their own health care with a stable and secure system. That means they can't get thrown off their insurance. They'll have access to the medical care they need when they need it. It will be portable and affordable. And those are the hallmarks of a system that will help this country's economy thrive and, I dare say, is perhaps the single biggest economic boon we can deliver to businesses large and small, reduce our deficit, and keep us competitive in the global economy.

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