Expressing support for designation of a National Day of Recognition for Long-Term Care Physicians.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 244) expressing support for the designation of March 20 as a National Day of Recognition for Long-Term Care Physicians, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

I now yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Con. Res. 244, a bill recognizing the work of our Nation's long-term care physicians. Millions of Americans with disabilities or chronic illnesses require long-term medical care. The medical professionals who provide this care commonly address multiple chronic conditions and develop strong, compassionate, and trusting relationships with their patients. Long- term care is often required by Americans in advanced age; and as this population increases, the demands for these services will obviously be increasing as well. However, all of us of any age are susceptible to illnesses, injuries, and conditions that require long-term care, so we all have a stake in this. All Americans should be grateful for the hard work of these dedicated professionals.

In particular, H. Con. Res. 244 recognizes the work of the American Medical Directors Association, the professional association for long- term care physicians officially chartered in 1978.

H. Con. Res. 244 was introduced by my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia, Representative Phil Gingrey, on March 2, 2010. The measure was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which reported it favorably by unanimous consent on March 18, 2010. The bill enjoys the support of over 50 Members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

And I would like to just say to the gentleman from Georgia, as much as we are talking about the great work of long-term care physicians, it is important to note, as he expresses his disdain for the health care reform measure, that the American Medical Association, made up of thousands upon thousands of physicians across this country, stands in strong support of the health care reform measure.

I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, as we again debate this health care reform measure, which is not the measure that is before us presently, but a resolution to promote long-term care physicians, I would just like to point out that while the bishops may not support the language in the Senate bill, the network which is comprised of tens of thousands of Catholic nuns across the country does support the language. So maybe it's the nuns versus the priests, and I would side with the nuns.

I yield.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, as we discuss this resolution on recognizing the long-term care physicians, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle keep wanting to debate the health care reform measure, so I feel it is incumbent on me to at least shed some light from our perspective on why this is so very important to the American people. And as we look at the health care professionals who are supporting the health care reform measure, I would like to just list a few of them.

The American Medical Association, the AARP, the Catholic Health Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, the American College of Physicians, the National Hispanic Medical Association, and the list goes on and on. All of these health care professionals can't be wrong.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) such time as she may consume.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).

Madam Speaker, I find this discussion somewhat hypocritical, to say the very least. We are here discussing the long- term care physicians and elevating them and talking about how necessary they are for the aging population in this country, and many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle took the opportunity to start talking about the health care reform measure. Well, guess what, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? The long-term care physicians of America have endorsed health care reform. So don't use them as some means by which you can debate health care reform when they're the very physicians that support this legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Madam Speaker, you know, there's something very ironic about the fact that when we are honoring long-term care physicians, that they have become the pawn by the Republicans to have a discussion on health care reform and--oh, by the way, the long-term physicians that they want to applaud are endorsing the health care reform legislation.

I have a story I want to share with my colleagues. It's about a constituent who has two children, a family of four. Their health insurance premium was $560 a month 4 years ago. Their health insurance premium today is $2,008 a month. The irony of this particular story is that the father is an emergency room doctor, and he gets his health insurance from Anthem Blue Cross. And, oh, by the way, Anthem Blue Cross negotiated a contract with him as an emergency room doctor where they require that he take a 60 percent discount in the fees that he was charging.

So what that should say to all of us is that the Anthem Blue Crosses of the world aren't spending the money on health care. They're spending the money on CEOs' salaries and bonuses and Wall Street; and that's why health care reform is so critical today. So I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing the work of our Nation's long-term care physicians who endorse health care reform by supporting this measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentlewoman. Madam Speaker, this is getting to be like a broken record. And I know there are a lot of people out there younger than I am who don't know what a broken record is, but it used to be something we played music on, and when it got a scratch on it, it skipped, and you had the same notes time after time after time.

Well, we've been listening now for a year to the same talking points that Frank Luntz wrote a year ago and handed out and said, This is the recipe for defeating health care reform. And we need to defeat health care reform because if we don't defeat it, and the Democrats succeed and President Obama succeeds, then we will be in the minority for the foreseeable future. That's been the strategy from day one, and things like government takeover and job killing and rationing are the same words we have heard time and time again. The reason we keep hearing those is because our colleagues from across the aisle don't want to discuss the substance. They don't want to discuss the benefits. They don't want to discuss the protections and the security that we're providing for virtually every American.

Now I've heard a lot of this stuff about the burden on small businesspeople and job-killer. Well, I don't know how many of my colleagues from the other side have a lot of experience in the business world. I was a small businessman. I have two brothers who run considerable-sized businesses. I have a sister who runs a small business. And my father was an entrepreneur who developed a business. Not once, not once, did ever any of them, or I, my father included, ever say the tax rate, their personal tax rate, made a difference in how they operated. And you know why? Because entrepreneurs aren't in it just to make money. They're in it because they want to be their own bosses and they're doing something they love. If the tax rate goes up, they just say, Hey, that's okay. I may have to work a little bit harder, but that's not why I'm in it. That's not going to change my business strategy, particularly when you're talking about a 2 or 3 percent tax increase on somebody who makes over a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Let me tell you what that means. Let's say you're making a million and a half dollars. Small business person, entrepreneur, making a million and a half dollars, and this bill is enacted. Now here's the way I look at it. Somebody comes to me and says, I'm going to make you a deal. You're a charitable guy. For $30,000 I'm going to allow you to say that you insured 32 million people; that you saved 18,000 lives a year; that you prevented 700,000 bankruptcies in this country; that you allowed small businesses to provide insurance for your employees and employees of small businesses around the country, because they are 60 percent of all the uninsured in the country. And I'd say that's a pretty good deal. I make charitable contributions that were a lot less effective than that.

This is a good deal for small business people. And let me tell you why. A small businessperson right now is facing premium increases across the country, 20, 30, 40 percent. Those are the types of things that really impede a small business--not a small incremental tax increase on their personal income. When you're talking about premium increases of 30 and 40 percent, you're dramatically changing the way you do business. Plus, you're being put in the position of forcing your employees to pay more for their coverage or else dropping their coverage altogether, which means some of those employees aren't going to be able to continue to work for you. They're going to have to find a job with a big company that has a group plan. No. This is the greatest step forward for small businesses in the country's history.

I tell you, I was in a small business with about 25 employees. We had a very young, very healthy group of employees, except for one person. We had a woman who had cancer. What happened to our insurance premiums? Every year, 15, 20 percent, because of her misfortune. Everybody else in the company suffered. That's what we face now.

I talked to a businessman in my district not too long ago. He has 110 employees. I said, What's going on with your health insurance? He said, Well, funny you should ask. Last year, we had two people that had pretty serious illnesses. Our first quote for renewal was a 75 percent increase. We negotiated that down to 38 percent, but we had to increase everybody's copays and everybody's deductibles, and we had to ask everybody to come out of pocket a little more money.

So here's the situation. Two employees get sick and 108 others have their standard of living diminished. That shouldn't happen in America. That's not the law of supply and demand which we rely on in many other areas. This is the problem with our health care system. These are the problems that we're trying to solve in our health care reform. This is a great step forward for small business, it's a great step forward for America, and I urge all my colleagues to support it. I know it will be the best vote I've ever cast in Congress.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 244 expressing support for the designation of March 20 as the National Day of Recognition for Long- Term Care Physicians and to honor an esteemed long-term care Georgian physician, Dr. William A. Dodd. As a primary care physician for almost four decades, I understand the important role long-term care physicians play for an ever-growing elderly population.

We as a body have spent the last year debating health care reforms. It appears that a weekend vote on government takeover of the entire health care system is the best Congress can come up with. It is a shame that we have lost an opportunity to debate real reforms that will help millions of Americans either continue with or obtain affordable, quality and accessible health care for their families, reforms that many in Congress can agree on, such as allowing the purchase of health care insurance across State lines, developing associations and State high-risk insurance pools to help lower insurance premiums, allowing medical providers to receive tax credits for providing free services for those who are unable to afford care and for full deductible of health care costs, tax fairness.

We in Congress can do much better than what the current discussion is yielding. For the sake of all long-term care physicians, as well as all Americans, the health care debate needs to move away from our current path and start over with commonsense reforms.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Jordan is exactly right; the American people are not being taken into consideration. They are being overlooked. But I want to remind the gentlelady from California, and the American people for that matter, the AMA only represents a very, very small fraction of physicians in this country, a very small group. All these groups that she named off have cut their own special little deals with the President and with the leadership here in the House and the Senate. They have cut out their special deals for their own parochial interests, but they haven't considered the American people.

I will tell the gentlelady from California, the vast majority of medical doctors who are practicing medicine, like I have for almost four decades, deplore this government takeover of the health care system, the vast majority, and what it is going to do if it is passed into law. It is going to mean that patients can't make health care decisions for themselves; doctors can't make health care decisions for their patients. Government bureaucrats here in Washington, DC, will be making those decisions.

And the people who are going to be hurt most are those people on Medicaid and Medicare, the poor people in this country and the senior citizens. The reason that they are going to be hurt the most, we already see it happening as doctors are having to not accept any more Medicaid patients, any more Medicare patients because of reduced reimbursement; and that is going to get much worse if this bill is ever passed into law.

So they may have an insurance card provided for them by the Federal Government in their pocket, but that insurance card is going to be worth the same amount that a confederate dollar was after the war between the States, worth nothing, because they can't get access. And that is exactly where the Democratic leadership is taking us. Access is going to be much worse than it is today. But we have some commonsense solutions.

We have some solutions. I have challenged Democrats to introduce a bill that would do four things: across-State- line purchasing for businesses and individuals, association pools to give people multiple options, develop State high-risk pools, and have tax fairness so everybody could deduct 100 percent of their health care costs and insurance off their income taxes. I've had many Democrats say they would love to support it but their leadership won't let them. We can have some commonsense solutions that would give people what my Democratic colleagues keep asking for--lower costs, more accessibility.

But the program we are seeing on the floor and that is going to be forced down the throats of the American people is actually going to be adverse to the people who can afford it the least, the poor people and the senior citizens in this country. It's going to put millions of people out of work. The cost is going to skyrocket. It is going to be disastrous.

We can find commonsense solutions. We can do some things that will be in the best interests of patients, doctors, businesses, and everybody, if we just do it.

I thank the gentlelady, and I appreciate the opportunity to come here. My friend from Ohio, we have been through this routine before. We were in the State Senate many years ago together, except I was arguing against his proposals and he was passing them. This time, he's arguing against ours and we're going to pass ours.

The issue really, here--and I think the gentlelady from California brought it up. Our friends on the other side, Madam Speaker, like to say, Well, seniors are against it. But then AARP endorses it. Our friends on the other side say doctors are against it. But the American Medical Association endorses it. You say that this is pro-abortion, and you have 59,000 Catholic nuns from across the country endorsing this bill, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes endorsing this bill. So you're not calling anybody over here pro-abortion. You're calling 59,000 Catholic nuns pro-abortion, which I think really brings this debate to a head.

We are doing something that we've not been able to do in this country for a hundred years. We all go back to our districts and with this bill alone we're going to make sure--I know in my congressional district-- that over 9,000 people can go back on the rolls because they've been denied because of a preexisting condition. We had 1,700 families in my congressional district last year go bankrupt.

I know this is difficult. And nobody on this side is saying that this hasn't been a difficult process. It has been. But nothing good happens without it being a little bit difficult and challenging. And that's the point we are at now in our country. We cannot get to the point where we are afraid to do bold things in our country. We have to do this.

Small businesses all over our State--to the gentleman from Ohio--all over our State can't get enough money to reinvest back into the capital, the technology, the wages that we need in order to get our businesses jump-started because it keeps going over to health care. If you're a small business, you're going to get a tax credit up to 50 percent of your health care costs. This is a tax cut for small businesses. And we're going to make sure that people are healthier and more productive.

I know our friends on the other side want to say, Well, let's start over. Let's get the blank piece of paper out and let's start all over. Let the insurance industry start all over. Let them go back to 1993 and 1994, revoke all of their increases that they gave to the American people over the last 15 or 20 years. Let them start over. Put all the people who have been denied because of a preexisting condition back on the insurance rolls; all the people who got sick when they had insurance and were kicked off insurance. Put them back on, and then maybe we'll consider starting all over. But we've got to make this bold move to make sure that everybody's in the tent. This is a moral issue on so many levels. We can't keep telling citizens in the wealthiest country that this globe has ever seen that we have the ability to care for you, but we can't afford it. It's time to pass this bill. We're going to do it this weekend. And we're going to look back, just like on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and civil rights. We did the right thing, the moral thing.

I would like to respond to that, Madam Speaker, because if we want to talk about memos, let's talk about the memo that the pollster and the consultant for the Republican Party put out last spring saying, No matter what you do, do not let President Obama pass health care. It will put you in the minority for another decade or two. It will make his Presidency. That was before we had any bill ready to go. It was socialism, it was this--the other side, Madam Speaker, was told by their consultants not to support this bill. And as for the Medicare costs, why are we going to save $500 billion? Because there is waste in the Medicare program, and this is something that they've proposed on the other side for a long, long time. In addition to that, if those people 55 to 60, before they go onto Medicare, actually have health insurance, they're going to cost less when they get into the Medicare program because they're not going to be as sick.

When you come from an old industrial area like ours, there are sick people who have lost their jobs, don't have health insurance. They wait until they get into Medicare. They are chronically ill, and they cost more money. That's how we're going to save money.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlelady from California (Ms. Speier) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan). I want to thank also my colleague in the Senate, Senator Saxby Chambliss, who is introducing the companion legislation.

Mr. Speaker, indeed, I do rise in proud support of authoring H. Con. Res. 244, expressing support for March 20 as a National Day of Recognition for Long-Term Care Physicians. And I want to give a loud shout-out to one of my best friends. In fact, he calls, he says we are pallbearer friends--now that's serious--Dr. Steve Jordan, who is a long-term care physician in Statesboro, Georgia, and one of my classmates in medical school.

Yet I support this resolution, Mr. Speaker, with a heavy heart because I fear that the Democrats' health reform bill will harm seniors and their long-term care. Seniors and patients all across this country have been telling our Congress that their health will suffer, their health will suffer if this bill,

ObamaCare, passes, $500 billion in cuts to Medicare when the program is already going broke. Seniors in my district know their health care costs will go up if this bill, bought with backroom deals, is passed.

This Democratic majority, while promising the American people they will reform insurance, will bring in billions of new profits to private insurance companies and for liberal bureaucrats. Let me be very clear about this, Mr. Speaker. If the Democratic majority jams this bill down the throats of American patients, our health care, their health care will suffer. It will not get better; it will get worse. And to top it all off, the majority party wants to negate the votes of 300 million patients in this country by not even allowing an up-or-down vote by their Members on this backroom-deal bill. And that, Mr. Speaker, is the worst deal of all.

Yes, of course, I stand in proud support of this resolution, and I thank my colleague for making it possible to bring it to the floor.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and of course I continue to support this great resolution recognizing March 20 as National Long-Term Care Physician Day.

As my colleague from Alabama, the gentleman from Huntsville, Dr. Parker Griffith, just spoke, Madam Speaker, as a medical oncologist he knows of what he speaks. And he talked about the long-term care physicians, many of us who have not yet needed their services but indeed we will. We will.

As I said earlier, Madam Speaker, I have great concerns. I have great concerns about their ability should this H.R. 3590, patient protection health care reform bill--I call it ObamaCare.

Should that pass, I have great concern about our long-term care physicians and what they can do, how they can help, how much in control they will be of the health and well-being of our senior citizens.

You know, the economic stimulus package of last year talked about shovel-ready projects. Well, that didn't have much effect, I don't think, on our senior citizens. But if this bill passes, if ObamaCare passes, Madam Speaker, then all of a sudden these senior citizens in our country will become shovel ready, and this bill will concern them. My great fear is they will be first in line to get thrown under the bus when we start rationing health care.

So as I support this resolution, as I said earlier, I have a very heavy heart and much concern. When you cut $500 billion out of a Medicare program that has $35 trillion, Madam Speaker, of unfunded liability over the next 50 years, and you are going to cut it 10 percent a year, Madam Speaker, for the next 10 years? How is that good for our senior citizens?