Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
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Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wished to spend a few minutes on this.
As a physician who cared for Medicare patients for 25 years, I cannot tell you how worried I am about what this bill is going to do to my senior patients. When Medicare was first written, two things were put into the law--very straightforward, very direct. Let me read them to you, for a minute. I hope Americans listen to this. Here is what the law is. CMS is breaking the law today and, with the new Medicare Commission, they are going to break it even further under this bill.
Section 1801 says this:
Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided, or over the selection, tenure, or compensation of any officer or employee of any institution, agency, or person providing health services; or to exercise any supervision or control over the administration or operation of any such institution, agency, or person.
That says that the Federal Government cannot practice medicine. That is what it says.
Section 1802 says this--and this is where it is important for my Medicare patients and everyone out there:
Any individual entitled to insurance benefits under this title may obtain health services from any institution, agency, or person qualified to participate under this title if such institution, agency, or person undertakes to provide him such services.
Well, what we have in this bill is the gutting of those two foundational principles of Medicare. The first is the Medicare Advisory Commission is going to tell you what you can and cannot have. Here is what we are going to see: You will choose what I tell you to choose if you are a Medicare patient.
Not only do we have almost $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, under the auspices that we have to control entitlement spending; not only are we taking away plans from people who are very satisfied with what they have today, but we have enhanced, and will enhance, the ability of the Federal Government to practice medicine.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who have never practiced medicine, who know the legalese but don't know the consequences of right now the rationing of Medicare on drugs such as Epigen and Neupogen--you see, Medicare has decided when oncologists can use those drugs. They have taken a blanket position, although they have released it somewhat. But what it says is this--I will give you a patient who has breast cancer. She is 67 years old.
She is being treated for breast cancer. She becomes anemic and neutropenic. That means her white blood cell count, her ability to fight infection goes down.
We have wonderful drugs that raise the white blood cell count and raise the red blood cell count. But Medicare, in its obvious wisdom of practicing medicine, has told the oncologists when they can and cannot use it. That is fine for 75 percent of the patients, but it totally ignores the other 25 percent of the patients who happen to have complicating factors, such as congestive heart failure or if they become anemic under breast cancer chemotherapy and have congestive heart failure as well. The government says you cannot have erythropoietin at this level of hemoglobin regardless of whether you have congestive heart failure.
What happens is the practice of medicine out of Washington or Maryland, more specifically, determines who can and cannot have a drug; in this case, erythropoietin.
What is the consequence of that? The consequence is that the patient did not die of breast cancer; she died of congestive heart failure that could have easily been treated had we not had medicine practiced by CMS denying the ability of the physician to give the patient exactly what she needed when she needed it.
We are starting down that road with this bill--aggressively starting down that road--because the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, combined with the Comparative Effectiveness Panel will not look at complications and will not look at secondary diseases. They will look at the average.
I want to tell my colleagues, when you are sitting in an office with your doctor, you are not average. You are you, and you are a specific individual with a set of factors that nobody else has. The judgment in the practice of medicine cannot be done by an insurance company or CMS at a distance without them having a hand on the patient. They never have their hand on a patient.
The whole art of medicine, which is 40 percent of getting people well, is the knowledge and training and experience and gray hair that comes with looking at the total patient, being one on one, not having the government between the doctor and their treatment of a patient.
What this bill does--this bill is a lie one of two ways. One, it says we are going to take this money out of Medicare and you are not going to notice any difference. That cannot be true. If we take $500 billion or $400 billion-plus out of Medicare, millions of seniors are going to notice a difference in their health care and what they get under Medicare. If we say that is not true, then the only way that is not true is the game that is being played on the financing of this program; that is to say, we are going to cut this money out of Medicare and then with a wink and a nod know we are never going to do it.
The majority leader said yesterday there is nothing more important in this Nation right now than passing health care reform. I differ with that statement. I think 10.2 percent unemployment is a whole lot more important, and finding those people jobs, than passing health care reform. I think a $12 trillion debt is more important to address than fixing health care right now. I think the fact that we have $350 billion worth of waste, fraud, and duplication in the Federal Government every year, and we are not addressing it, is more important than fixing health care right now. I think the fact that our economy is still on its back and people are continuing to lose jobs is more important than fixing health care right now.
I understand the political dynamics, but I also understand very well with my quarter of a century of practicing medicine that what this bill is going to do is destroy the best health care system in the world, and it is going to undermine the security of every senior in this country because what starts as a small couple of things, such as Neupogen and Epogen or like when you can have bone densitometry and whether your osteoporosis can truly be evaluated, CMS has already said how much you can do that, whether your bones are falling apart or not. It is the start of the government practicing medicine.
It is the beginning of our seniors having the government step in between them and their physician in terms of the physician wanting to do what is best for that senior and the government saying: No, I will tell you what you are going to have. I will tell you what you will have.
Thomas Jefferson taught us a lot. He predicted we would have ``future happiness for us if we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.''
I want to see a lot of things changed in health care. I want to see true competition in the insurance industry. I want to make sure nobody loses their insurance because they get sick. I want to make sure everybody can get insurance if they are sick. I do not disagree with the basic premise. What I disagree with is moving $2.5 trillion more under government control, which will raise costs ultimately in the health care sector. If it does not raise costs and we are truly going to take this money from Medicare, what it is going to do to our seniors, I have a message for you: You are going to die soon, and they are going to say that is not true, that it is not true.
When you restrict the ability of the primary caregivers in this country to do what is best for their senior patients, what you are doing is limiting their life expectancy. We are saying CMS, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and the Comparative Effectiveness Panel will tell the doctors what they can and cannot do, ignoring the 20 percent of the people for whom that is exactly the wrong prescription. So for 20 percent of our seniors, this bill is going to be a disaster, but it is going to save money because you are not going to be around for us to spend any money on you because the government will have already told us what the treatment plan will be for you. We will decide in Washington through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services what you will receive.
They will dispute that, but the people who are going to be disputing that are lawyers; they are not doctors. They have never laid a hand on a patient. They have never put their hand forward on a Medicare patient knowing the consequences of the total patient, the background, the medical history, the sociologic factors that fit, the family dynamics, the past medical history, the family history, and the present state of mind of that patient.
Even more important, what this bill is going to do is divide the loyalty of your doctor away from you. When you go to the doctor today, most of the time that doctor's No. 1 interest is in you and your well-being. When you have this Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and you have this Comparative Effectiveness Panel, what that does is that causes the physician--he or she--to take their eyes off of you. Now they are going to put their eyes on what the government says because the consequences of not doing what the government says will ultimately result in some type of sanction.
Do we want physicians to be patient-centered and focused on their patients or do we want physicians to have their eye on the government and half of an eye on the patient? Which do you think is going to give us the best care? Which do you think is going to give us the greatest quality of life? What is going to give us the greatest longevity with the greatest quality of life? Is it the government practicing medicine, or is it the trust that has been developed through years between a patient and a doctor to do what is in the best, long-term interest of that patient?
I cannot tell you the number of people who die from the CMS regulations on Epogen for oncologists. But there were hundreds--hundreds--because Medicare never looked at the patient; they looked at dollars.
As we go forward in this debate, what I want seniors in America to know--and I am fast approaching Medicare age; I am 3 years from it--I want them to know the key thing they are going to lose in this bill is the loyalty and primacy of their physician thinking about them. We are going to divide that loyalty to where the physician is going to be looking at the government. If you think that is not true, just look at what has happened so far when CMS
has decided to start practicing medicine.
In the HELP Committee, I offered an amendment to change the language so there would be absolutely a prohibition on rationing care and directing the care from Washington. It was rejected out of hand--rejected out of hand. Not one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted to prohibit rationing of health care.
Why would they do that? Because the ultimate intention through the Comparative Effectiveness Panel is to ration care. It is to ration the care. It is to limit the amount of dollars we spend and never look at the individual patient.
If we think about the Medicare cuts in this bill, we are going to take $135 billion out of the hospitals. Do you think seniors will ever notice that? I do. I think when you ring your button and you are hurting and you need pain medicines or you need to go to the bathroom, the time it takes for somebody to get there will not be sufficient. What will happen is you will wait. You will have a complication. If you have acute shortness of breath and press the button, the available nurses will not be there. There will be a consequence to cutting $135 billion from payments to hospitals in this country.
We are going to take $120 billion out of the seniors--the one in five seniors who now have Medicare Advantage. I agree, it is more expensive than Medicare. It needs to have some cost containment through competitive bidding, but we should not be decreasing the services, which is exactly what is going to happen. If you are a senior on Medicare Advantage, you are going to lose benefits you now have. You are going to lose them.
One of the ideas of Medicare Advantage was preventive services. One of the things that improved the care in rural America was Medicare Advantage. Yet we are going to take that away. The vast majority of the benefits we are going to cut in half.
We are going to take $15 billion from nursing homes. That may or may not be appropriate, but the way to do that is through a competitive experience based on quality and outcome rather than some green-eyeshade staffer saying we can take $15 billion out of Medicare from payments to nursing homes.
One little secret that is not in this bill, that has not been addressed in this bill, is the estimate by a Harvard researcher that there is $120 billion to $150 billion a year in fraud in Medicare alone. HHS admits to $90 billion. We know it is well over $100 billion a year. Cleaning up the fraud in Medicare would pay for a lot of health care for a lot of folks in this country. There is $2 billion in this whole bill to clean up the fraud.
Why would we not fix that first? Why would we take money from Medicare to create a new program when in fact we are wasting 10 to 15 percent?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. COBURN. I will close with this remark. If you are a senior and you are on Medicare, you better be afraid of this bill. I don't come to the floor and say that very often, but your health care is totally dependent, in terms of being decreased by this bill.
I yield the floor.
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