The Majority Makers and Health Care

THE MAJORITY MAKERS AND HEALTH CARE -- (House of Representatives - July 14, 2009)

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Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it's a great honor for me to be here tonight to lead a discussion about the most pressing and the most significant problem to most Americans, and that is the question of health care. I'm here with Members of the class of 2006. We call ourselves the Majority Makers, and from time to time we are here to address matters of great national import with you. But this is a very special topic for the class of 2006.

I remember very well when I began my campaign for Congress back then, in 2006, when many of the headlines of our Nation's newspapers and our television news operations were all about the Iraq war, and people would say to me, Well, I guess everyone's talking about the Iraq war to you. And I said, No, nobody's talking about the Iraq war. It's health care, health care, health care. Everywhere I went, neighborhood picnics, Catholic picnics on Friday night, festivals, businesses, schools, wherever I went, I heard story after story about how Americans were fed up with the health care system that was not serving them. In fact, it was, in many cases, killing them.

Well, here we are, 3 years later, and while health care may not have been on the front pages of the newspapers up till now because we have a severe economic decline and many challenges we're dealing with, this Congress is ready to put health care back on the front pages. And President Obama has already indicated that this is his top priority in his first time in office, and the reasons that that is so are not hard to determine.

It's pretty easy to look around us, look at the numbers and see why we have to take significant, decisive action to improve, to change our health care system. Just a few weeks ago, Dr. Christine Rohmer, who heads the White House's economic team, testified before the House Budget Committee that if we don't make significant steps to reform health care, to get a handle on cost, to bring prices down, that health care, which now comprises 17 percent of our economy, by 2040, would make up 35 percent of our economy.

Well, you don't have to be an economist or a health care expert to know that if health care takes up 35 percent of our economy, it's going to squeeze out most of everything else. In short, it is an unsustainable number. And we can go on and talk about the dramatic impact of Medicare and those types of expenses on the Federal budget as well as on the general economy.

But what most people are concerned about is not the big picture, not the macroeconomic picture; it's the kitchen table picture. It's what happens in your household, what happens to individuals, those people that we meet in all segments of our society from one coast to the other who have had significant difficulties with their health care system. They're small business people who have seen their premiums rise 15, 20, 25 percent every year in spite of the fact that they have very low utilization, healthy people.

We've seen story after story of individuals who, at 55 years of age, lose their job. They can't get COBRA for a very long period of time. They don't qualify for Medicare. They try to go out in the private market and buy insurance, but at 55, most everybody's going to have some kind of preexisting condition that makes them, under current, the current system, uninsurable.

We heard from a couple yesterday in that exact same position. They came to testify to Congress. A woman has had epilepsy since she was 5 years old. Her husband lost his job. Now they go out and try to shop for insurance in the private market, but because she has epilepsy, something totally beyond her control, obviously, the only insurance policy she could get cost $2,600 a month. Now, how many people in this country can afford $2,600 a month for health insurance? $30,000 a year. Well, not very many. But these are stories that are repeated time after time after time.

I have to tell one that was a personal experience of mine, and then I'm going to let my colleagues from the class of 2006 contribute not just their stories about where health care needs to be fixed, but also what this Congress is proposing to do to set America on a sounder course for health care.

Back during my 2006 campaign, we had a young worker, a young woman in her mid-twenties, was a volunteer in our campaign. She was severely disabled, so severely disabled she was wheelchair-bound. And she told me that if she were not covered by SSI, she would have spent, had to spend $3,000 a month just on her prescription medications, but because of SSI, she was able to manage her health care problems.

Now, she had, and I hope she still has, a boyfriend, and they wanted to get married. Her boyfriend worked at a supermarket company. He was making $11 an hour, which, to them, was a great salary. But they couldn't get married, because if they got married, she would lose her disability coverage, and the company where her boyfriend was employed could not, would not put her on the policy because she was so expensive to cover.

So what we have here are two people in love, wanting to get married, wanting to start a family, wanting to do what so many Americans want to do, and because of a health care coverage issue, they cannot get married. In this country, there is no excuse for that situation.

Time after time, all of us run into situations in which people are having to make important life decisions based on whether there is the availability of health care coverage. There is someone who wants to leave a company and wants to start a small business of his own--not able to do it because of coverage. There is somebody who wants to leave a situation, in which he or she has coverage, in order to go back to school to further his education and advance his prospects--can't do it because of insurance coverage. We all know these scenarios all too well.

So this Congress and this President have set out to change the health care system in this country to make sure that every American has peace of mind and security where his or her health care is concerned. That's what we're about, and that's why we're going to put health care back on the front pages and back as the lead story on America's newscasts over the next few weeks, because we are going to do for the American people what we know they want us to do and need us to do.

With that, I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes.

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Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman.

He raises a point that, I think, is appropriate to make at this time. We will hear a lot over these few weeks as we're going to be actively engaged in this issue of trying to bring a bill to the floor and of passing it before August 1. You will hear a lot about the Canadian system, and you will hear a lot of fear tactics being thrown at the debate because, right now, those people who are opposing what we are trying to do really have nothing but fear tactics to throw at it.

It's interesting, because we had a hearing in Ways and Means several weeks ago. A gentleman was there who was arguing against our public option, the public option part of the proposal, which basically is a government-run plan that would compete with private insurers and that would compete for your business, for the business of the

American people. He kept saying, We don't want Canada. We don't want Canada. We don't want Canada with the long lines and all of these things--all of these myths that have arisen around the Canadian system.

I asked him if he knew how many countries in the world, how many industrialized nations, had a nationalized health insurance system. He said all of them except the United States. How many have universal coverage? All of them except the United States. How many have a blend of public and private where you have a basic level of coverage provided by the government but where people can buy private insurance to enhance their positions? He said, Well, all of them except Canada. I said, So you have chosen the one country in the world that is an outlier. He used that to undermine the arguments for an American plan when we haven't copied anything from Canada in this country, that I know of, except hockey. He really didn't have a response to that.

The point is you will hear a lot of these myths thrown out, and they really don't relate to what we're doing or are trying to do, which is to create a uniquely American solution to a uniquely American problem.

With that, I would like to yield time to my colleague from Massachusetts, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas.

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Mr. YARMUTH. Oh, absolutely. I think that's the uniquely American element of this plan that is most important to stress. No one is forced to do anything in this plan. If you like your coverage, if you have employer-sponsored insurance that you're happy with, you get to keep it. No change is necessary, no change is mandated. You get to keep your choice of doctors. You get to choose your hospital. These are the fundamental elements that we considered extremely critical to this legislation because we know many Americans are satisfied with their health coverage, and we don't want to change their situation.

We want to make sure that everyone is satisfied with their coverage, that everyone has coverage; and through the competitive American spirit, that we think we are building, creating this legislation, that we will be able to provide the type of environment where people who like what they have can keep it, people who don't like what they have can shop for something that better suits their family's needs; and that's what the entire purpose of this great legislation is.

Mr. COHEN. And if you keep it, you are probably going to get it cheaper because where the uninsured will be insured, and you won't be paying for them through that hidden tax.

Mr. YARMUTH. Well, I think that's the most essential part of this legislation. If we can't control costs in the health care system, if we can't see to it that people get what they need at a lower price, then we know, for instance, that if we don't have reform, it's projected that the average family's cost will increase $1,800 per year for the foreseeable future. That's unsustainable. We know that.

So cost control through competition is the critical--and through changes we hope that we can incentivize in the way medicine is delivered, health care is delivered and practiced in this country, that we can make affordable, quality health care available to every American.

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Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman because he talked so much about the higher level of care at the emergency room, most of which is uncompensated for those providers and are shifted to the private-pay customers. I know there are estimates out there that indicate that there is somewhere around a hundred billion dollars a year that's actually care administered in the emergency rooms to people by hospitals who do it as part of charity work, but it's all being shifted to the people who are covered.

So when we talk about a health reform plan that's going to cost roughly $100 billion a year for 10 years, we're already spending that $100 billion. So it's not money new to the system, which is, I think in the example of we have plenty of money spent in this country on health care right now.

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Mr. YARMUTH. I appreciate all the comments from my colleagues, and I'd like to close by reading a letter that I received from a constituent of mine who's 10 years old.

It says: ``Dear Congressman Yarmuth,'' My name is Matthew Gregory, and I am a 10-year-old that lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

``I am writing this letter because I have a younger brother with autism, and I want you to cosponsor the Autism Treatment Acceleration Act.'' Not the piece of legislation we're talking about now, but relevant.

``I would really appreciate the efforts you would provide to cosponsor the bill that would help end autism

insurance discrimination. My parents spend $50,000 per year for my brother's autism, and I think it's a national crisis.

``It seems like families that have not had their State's autism insurance bills passed have to pay unnecessary expenses just because a child is different.''

And here's the kicker. ``It's just not fair, and this is a fair country and everybody, no matter who they are, including my brother Eric, should be treated equally.''

So there you have it. A 10-year-old understands the essential unfairness of the system we have now, the fact that so many people are uninsured, the fact that so many people pay too much for the insurance they have, have to make life decisions based on whether they can get insurance or not, and that's what this Congress is determined to correct.

We have an historic opportunity here to create a just, fair health care system, one that is affordable and sustainable for this country and which will make sure that every American citizen has the health care he and she needs for their families well into the future.

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