GOP Doctors Caucus: Medicare Seniors and Obamacare
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROE of Tennessee. I thank you, Dr. Fleming, and I appreciate you hosting this hour tonight and a chance for us to discuss in detail the health care of this Nation.
You know, about 4 or 5 years ago I made a decision, after 31 years of practice, to think about running for Congress. And one of the reasons was I knew that the health care issue was going to be huge in the debate in this Nation's future. And, boy, has that turned out to be prophetic.
Secondly, the thing that I noticed in my patients when I practiced, the single biggest factor for both Medicare patients and my other private patients and patients without health insurance, was it was too expensive; it cost too much money to go see the doctor and go to the hospital. If it were more affordable, more of us would have health care coverage.
Thirdly, we had a group of patients in my practice that couldn't afford expensive health insurance premiums. They both worked. Let's say it was a carpenter, perhaps his wife worked at a local diner or at a local retailer that may not provide health insurance coverage, and they make $35,000 or $40,000 a year, but they could not afford $1,000 a month for health insurance coverage. And, lastly, we have a liability crisis in this country.
The other thing that we're going to get into a little later in this discussion today--and this is the absolute sacrosanct in health care--is that health care decisions--and I'm going to say this a couple of times--health care decisions should be made between a patient and the doctor and that patient's family. It should not be made by an insurance company, and it should not be made by the Federal Government. And we're going to talk a little bit later about the Independent Payment Advisory Board that will be making those decisions in the future.
Do we need health care reform in America? Absolutely. Do we need this type of health care reform? Absolutely not. It's a disaster. And we'll go into that a little later about what my major concern is for my patients that I left in Johnson City, Tennessee, which was how are they going to access a Dr. John Fleming, how are they going to access a Dr. Scott DesJarlais, who are family practice primary care physicians. And the group I have at home that I'm in that I left to come here had over 80 primary care providers. How are they going to access those?
Well, let's go look at where we were in the sixties when I was a young college student, which was that we had a group of people, my grandparents and so forth, who would be retiring. And at that point in time, because their insurance was tied to their employment--if they had health insurance coverage--there was no way for them to get any coverage. They couldn't buy it; there was no way it could be provided for. So the Federal Government then got involved in this by forming Medicaid and Medicare in 1965.
Our Medicare program in 1965 was a $3 billion program. There was no Congressional Budget Office at that time, but the estimates were that in 25 years--so in 1990--this program was going to be a $15 billion program. The actual number was $110 billion. They missed it by seven times. And in your initial graph right here, if you had placed in that graph, Dr. Fleming, interest on the national debt--the one you showed with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security--by 2020 or 2022, even at current interest rates, it will absorb the entire Federal budget. And that is why we're having this discussion today, to save Medicare.
I want to mention just briefly, because we'll kick this off later, in the current health care bill there have been many changes to Medicare. There are increased taxes on medical devices. The President said the other day--and we're going to talk about it next week, I think, and debate the payroll tax--about how he was a tax cutter. Well, I would suggest that the President read his own health care bill because there are massive tax increases in that bill.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board is a bureaucratically appointed board, 15 people appointed by the President--and I don't want a Republican President appointing them and I don't want a Democrat President appointing them--approved by the Senate to do what? To look at this Medicare, as we've pointed out, with millions of Medicare recipients each day and--as Dr. Fleming pointed out--$500 billion to $550 billion less going into the system. More people going in, people living longer--much longer, which is a very good thing--we're looking at a catastrophe for our Medicare program if we don't make some proactive changes now.
And how can you talk about how can you fix a system that everybody in this Chamber knows is broken--all 435 of us know it--if you can't even discuss it, if you're accused of dumping Grandma off a cliff if you even talk about a system that--I personally am on Medicare. Right now I'm a Medicare recipient, so I have a vested interest in seeing that this program works for current seniors.
I was at Furman University Monday night speaking to a group of college students on health care. It was a privilege to be there. It's a great college. A big turnout of young people. And it was embarrassing for me to look at those young people who are just beginning their careers and to think that we're going to not leave them the same access to care that I have available to me right now.
If you look at these numbers, Dr. Fleming, you see that it is not sustainable, so we have to have this conversation. I want to thank you for holding this 1-hour.
I see we have numerous other colleagues here tonight.
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Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Dr. Fleming, thank you. I was just looking here, over 200 years of experience. What a diverse group. We have nursing, dentistry, family practice, OB-GYN, surgery, and so on. I think one of the greatest frustrations I had when I came to Congress, and Dr. Gingrey has been here longer than you and I have, and one of the things that I noticed in the health care debate that we had, now going on 3 years ago, was this: with nine physicians, M.D.s in the U.S. Congress, in the 111th Congress, not a single one of us was consulted about this health care bill. This was done on a completely partisan basis.
I have to kind of chuckle. I have never seen a Republican or a Democrat heart attack in my life. I have never personally operated on a Republican or a Democrat cancer in my life. These are people problems, as Congresswoman Buerkle said a moment ago. These are people problems that affect all of us in this country.
What we wanted to do, as I stated when we started, was to make the cost of care go down. This is not going to do this. Look, this is very simple. When we talked about the IPAB, and I think we'll have to use a different time to discuss the Independent Payment Advisory Board because it is so detailed, but just very briefly, this is how this works.
Several of us have pointed out that $575 billion was taken out. Three million seniors a year going into Medicare, reaching Medicare age, and this group, this group of bureaucrats up here appointed, and I don't want them appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. I think Congress ought to be accountable, and we ought to be accountable to the American people about what happens to Medicare, not push it off to some bureaucrats that are going to make these decisions, and then we say, oh, I'm sorry, we can't do anything when care is denied because when you have $575 billion less, and 3 million more people added per year, that's 30-something million people in 10 years, you know what that leads to, Mr. Fleming.
It leads to a rationing of care. Decreased access. And if you have decreased access to your primary care provider, it means decreased quality of your care and the cost is going up. That's what's going to happen with this plan. That's why it's imperative, not just Medicare, but that we overturn the Affordable Care Act because it's not good medicine for patients.
If we simply had been included in the debate, this would not be a plan that you had to run through and get rid of the 1099 form, the IPAB. It's a bipartisan bill now with 214 bipartisan cosponsors. Those folks realize it's a bad idea. I could go on and on and on.
One of the good parts of the Affordable Care Act, let's point it out, it costs more money, but allowing a 26-year-old to stay on their parents' health care plan, that's a great idea unless your parents are not paying the bill. Currently, if a young person, 22 or 23 years old, gets health care, they'll pay one-sixth what I do. Now what happens with this, it has to be a three-to-one ratio, so their health insurance plan costs double.
We could go on and on about the inconsistencies. I think the previous Speaker, the current minority leader, had it right when she said let's pass it and then find out what's in it. Well, I read it, as most of us physicians did, and we found out all of the things that were in there that were not good for our patients. We're just now discovering it's going to be more costly for businesses out there, and we need to have an entire hour on that.
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