Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (Senate - October 21, 2009)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, in 10 minutes Senator LeMieux will make his maiden speech to the Senate, and I know Members are anxious to hear that speech, but in the meantime I would like to talk further about health care reform.

Earlier this month, the Senate Finance Committee voted to approve a deeply flawed bill that would raise taxes, cut Medicare, increase government spending, increase health care premiums, and actually drive the cost of health care up, not down. We know the Finance Committee's bill will not be the final product voted on by the Senate.

Three or four Members of one party, and one party only, without the press there, without the public looking in, without other Members of the Senate there, are meeting now behind closed doors to merge the Finance Committee bill with the HELP Committee's version. The secret nature of these meetings is all the more reason for the final version of the bill to be made available to the public prior to a final vote.

We have all heard the outcry from our constituents asking us to read the bills before we vote on them. I think we should go one step further than reading this health care bill ourselves: we should allow the public to read the bill themselves.

Just recently, eight of my friends on the other side of the aisle sent a letter to the majority leader demanding--rightly--that this health care legislation be made available for 72 hours before the Senate proceeds with this bill. The letter from these eight conscientious Democrats says, among other things:

Without a doubt, reforming health care in America is one of the most monumental and far-reaching undertakings considered by this body in decades.

The letter goes on to ask four things of the majority leader: that the legislative text and complete budget scores from CBO on health care legislation to be considered on the Senate floor be made available 72 hours in advance; secondly, the letter asks that the legislative text and complete CBO score on health care legislation as amended be made available; and they make the same request as far as amendments to be filed and offered on the floor and the final conference report which might come from the House and Senate.

I congratulate these Members of the other party for making this request. I think the question on the minds of people around Washington, DC, and around the country watching this issue is, Will this request be ignored? Will these eight Members of the Democratic caucus be steamrolled by their leadership? Will this conscientious request be cast aside by the majority leader?

The people deserve to see the final product of the majority party. And we know the American people want to see it because as more Americans learn about the product, the less they like it. A survey released Monday found that a majority of Americans opposed the plans backed by the President and Democrats in Congress. This skepticism persists despite the best public relations ever of my Democratic colleagues and our President.

The bill approved by the Finance Committee essentially is still a partisan one.

Numerous studies and estimates have highlighted how the bill's new mandates would actually raise insurance premiums for Americans, not lower them. A recent Pricewaterhouse-ÐCoopers analysis of the bill found that by 2019, the average cost of a family's insurance policy would increase by $4,000, more than it would if Congress simply does nothing at all. Of course, no one is suggesting Congress do nothing at all. The status quo is clearly inadequate, and there are many things we can do on a step-by-step basis to improve the health of Americans.

But back to this $4,000 in extra costs for insurance, the driving factor behind that is the staggering tax hikes necessary to pay for this $1 trillion new entitlement program. The Finance Committee's proposal raises taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars--on insurance plans, on medical device producers, on pharmaceuticals. We all know taxes will not lower the cost of these services. In fact, we can expect the opposite--these taxes will be paid by average Americans.

Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin recently said: ``These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums or by fueling higher health care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums.''

He went on to say the plan ``would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse.''

In addition to failing to reduce the price of health care, the Finance plan carries a number of other serious flaws, particularly as it relates to Medicare and health care options for our seniors. The bill cuts Medicare by $500 billion. Let me repeat that. The bill cuts $500 billion from Medicare, despite the fact that the Medicare program is already insolvent and on the path to bankruptcy in the year 2017, unless we take action.

Billions of Medicare dollars would be cut from hospitals, from nursing homes, from hospice care under this Finance Committee proposal. It would also slash $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, denying 11 million seniors the health care choices and options regular Medicare does not offer.

If these provisions were not bad enough, the bill's negative impact on State budgets is even more disturbing. Medicaid would be expanded to a level that threatens funding of essential State services such as education, such as law enforcement. In my State of Mississippi, Medicaid payments already make up 12 percent of our State's overall budget, and Governor Barbour has joined a growing chorus of Governors, both Republican and Democratic, in warning of the consequences of Congress forcing States to shoulder more of the Medicaid burden. In fact, if the finance bill is enacted, Medicaid's expansion would result in fully 25 percent of Americans being on this government-run health care system. We know it is now run so poorly that many physicians will not accept Medicaid patients. The bill proposes we put one-quarter of Americans on this very poorly run program.

After weeks of talk, we get a bill that is worse than the status quo. I fear this bill is only going to get worse when the majority leader emerges from his secret negotiations and tries to pass his version of a Federal health care takeover. I think we can do better. Raising taxes, increasing costs, and eliminating choice is hardly the type of health care reform the American people want, particularly during a time when unemployment levels are at a 25-year high. There are many commonsense reforms that could pass Congress quickly and with bipartisan support. This is not a choice between a Federal takeover and the status quo. A step-by-step approach can inject competition, increase choices, and use market principles to bring down prices. By allowing people to purchase health insurance across State lines, by implementing medical malpractice reform and allowing small businesses to join in association health plans, we can lower the cost of health care and increase choice without raising taxes or increasing government spending or increasing the size and scope of government.

That is the kind of health care reform the American people deserve, and it is the direction the health care debate should take.

I yield the floor.

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