Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, as a physician, I must say the news coming out of Washington is all bad when it comes to the government takeover of our health care.

Just last night, Speaker Pelosi got the news that she does not have the votes to pass it. The Senate expects the debate to spill over into next year, and even Democrat candidates back home are turning against this crazy idea.

Why is this happening? Simply put, they can't find a way to pay for it. There are not enough taxpayers and insurance policyholders to pay the exploding tab, and the polls show a continued decline in support. Also, they can't depend on the wealth of the Federal Government anymore as we are broke, broke.

This is not a case of Republicans wanting sick people to die quickly. It is a case of wanting this sick, expensive, ineffective, and wasteful government takeover of health care to die quickly.

Mr. Speaker, as a physician, a family physician for over 30 years, I must speak out again on health care. The President promised, promised that if you like what you have you, you can keep it. But it appears, with the current Democrat health plan, this is not true, at least when it comes to seniors.

Both the House and Senate proposals contain billions in cuts to Medicare Advantage, a very popular private insurance program that 25 percent of America's seniors have chosen for themselves. With ObamaCare this, the Greatest Generation, will lose benefits they currently enjoy, another broken promise by the President. Many seniors will be forced to pay for services such as supplemental vision or hearing coverage that was previously covered. Consequently, seniors will be dumped back into the regular Medicare that, according to this plan, will have $300 billion stripped from it.

The net result of this broken promise for seniors, some of whom are my patients, will be to have substantial reduction in service, care, and benefits.

Mr. Speaker, I have been a family physician for over 30 years, and that is why I believe the Democrat health care reform proposals being circulated in Congress right now are bad for American families, bad for American seniors, and bad for American small businesses.

If we allow a government takeover of health care, a $544 billion surtax is going to be imposed on the so-called rich to pay for this awful plan. Who are these ``rich'' people, Mr. Speaker? They are small business owners. Small businesses create 7 out of 10 jobs, yet we are about to cripple employers and guarantee that the 10 percent unemployment rate that we currently face will only continue to rise. The result of these new taxes on jobs will be the loss of an estimated 5.5 million jobs.

Overall, Americans will suffer $820 billion in new taxes; another broken promise by the President. Democrats also want to impose another $208 billion in new taxes on businesses that can't afford to pay for their employees' health care.

Why are Democrats pushing a government takeover of health care?

I thank the gentleman, Dr. Broun from Georgia, whom I consider a mentor of mine, a family physician who has preceded me into Congress. And it's important that we physicians speak out on this important issue. We've come to a point now where the Democrat version of this, or versions I shall say, are about to be put together and put to a vote. And I think that we have an idea about what's going to come out on the other side of this, whether it's a hybrid or some sort of combination or one or the other, the Baucus bill, which mainly emphasizes increased premiums, taxes on health plans, on medical devices, if you will; and then on the House side, a plan with a so- called robust public option which we know to be a very robust takeover by the government of health care which will lead to a number of taxes.

Every one of them finance this program basically in two ways: one, raising taxes or a cost on premiums or both; and the other is gutting Medicare to the tune of a half trillion dollars. On top of that, it gets a running start by taking in revenue for about 3 years before actually spending it on anything to, again, cook the books and make things look better. And then on top of that is an impending decline in reimbursements to physicians of 21 percent in their Medicare reimbursements, which, again, adds another $250 billion of cost on this, which can be hidden. They're trying to hide it, but it's not successful.

That at the end of the day, this thing is going to be financed by a combination of increased premium costs--significantly increased premium costs--or taxes or both, and gutting Medicare to the tune of a half trillion dollars, and on top of that, another $250 billion of impending cuts to the tune of, at this point, of 21 percent, if not greater, to physician reimbursement, which if it ever goes into effect will basically collapse the Medicare market and accessibility of care to physicians.

Absolutely. It's only a fraction of the real cost.

Again, to look at the fundamentals of economics, today doctors are paid on average 80 percent of the cost of the care they provide. The rest is made up on private insurance. And if you cut that further, then physicians will find not only can they not break even on providing care to Medicaid recipients, they are going to lose money. And they can't afford to do that. They can't make payroll. They can't pay their light bill, their rent and so forth if they can't make enough money from their patients.

So the bottom line here is the basic dishonesty of this bill. It says that a half trillion dollars will be cut out of Medicare and it's going to come out of fraud, waste and abuse. After 40 years, no one has been able to figure out how to do that. No one advances a methodology for doing that today. And so if you add already the fact that physicians are paid less than their costs, an impending cut of 21 percent of their reimbursement and perhaps more in future years, and then another half trillion dollars, which is going to go against them and hospitals, what we're basically doing is telling seniors, Forget it; we're taking your health care, and we're giving it to other people.

If the gentleman would yield, I would like to extend that another step. Remember that I said earlier the only way doctors are making it now is that private insurance is making up the difference, it is making up the gap, on average $1,800 per family per year that is insured.

No. Absolutely. What this bill will do is not only gut Medicare and reduce the reimbursements to physicians already, but it is going to deliberately push people from private insurance, because this so-called competition is going to be an artificial market, which is really a low-ball, and it is going to force employers to push their employees onto this. So you will see Medicare enlarging. And when I say that, I don't necessarily mean in a generic way.

Just today, the Democratic Party released a trial balloon, saying, well, instead of calling it a public option, let's call it Medicare for everyone. Every physician will be paid at the Medicare rates for all these new patients.

So what you have in the end, just to summarize, is a growing Medicare pool or universe and a shrinking private insurance, which will drive insurance costs up steeply, and you will be left with basically a collapsed private insurance market.

I appreciate your yielding for a moment.

Absolutely true. Apart from being a family physician for over 30 years, I have owned small nonmedical businesses for a number of years, over 20 years, and we ran into this same escalation problem, 9, 10, 12, 15 percent, really, per year. Finally we said, What can we do to resolve this? And the Health Savings Account had been enacted again by the Republicans just shortly before that, and I studied it.

I used my background as a physician in the economics of medicine and I said, You know what? This, in effect, connects the patient, in this case me and my employees, back to the real cost of care. It should have a remarkable impact bending the cost curve down. We didn't use that term then because it hadn't been used. But to make a long story short, we implemented it. We are about 7 years down the road now, and our net increase in inflation cost has been less than 3 percent per year.

Will the gentleman yield on that?

On the subject of health savings account--and you heard me say our experience was less than 3 percent increase in costs per year. And you point out that it's the employer's dollars that are going into that account, not the employees. It's pre-tax or nontaxed, really; and it's used at the employee's discretion.

Just a quick example: had a lady who, when we first implemented this, she said, Well, I'm a little concerned because this means that I'll have to pay out of pocket, meaning out of the health savings account for my medications for my respiratory problems. And I said, Well, what is it that you take and how much does it cost? And she says, Well, I use several inhalers. It costs me $100, $150 a month for medication. And I suggested, Well, why don't you stop smoking and you'll save money on the tobacco, and you can stop your inhalers, probably. And sure enough, she did: came back 3 months later and thanked me. She felt better. She had a lot more money in her pocket, and it all had to do with the health savings account.

I just have 15 seconds of a thumbnail little summary I'd like to mention.

If ObamaCare passes, there will be increased taxes for the middle class--which the President promised wouldn't happen--and significantly increased private premiums. It will decrease services to senior citizens. It will explode the budget. And the bottom line is we will pay more for less

Madam Speaker, for 20 years, the Honorable Jim McCrery represented Louisiana's Fourth Congressional District. It is an honor to directly follow former Congressman McCrery and represent the great people of northwest Louisiana.

Earlier this week, former Congressman McCrery's son, Scott, received his Eagle Scout award, the highest award given in scouting. Scott's Eagle project was a rather ambitious undertaking. He organized nearly 50 volunteers to remove debris from the historic grounds of Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. The debris covered an area the size of two football fields. In addition to being an eyesore, it also represented a fire hazard to the mansion. Some of the debris Scott and his volunteer corps gathered was used to build habitat for the wildlife that lives on the property.

Scott began his scouting journey in Shreveport 10 years ago when, as a Tiger Cub, he joined the Cub Scout pack at South Highlands Elementary School.

I congratulate Scott McCrery on this prestigious award.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 788, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. Speaker, as a physician and a father and a Member of Congress, I join the majority of Americans that do not want the government takeover of our health care system. They are demanding Congress scrap H.R. 3200 and come together in a bipartisan fashion to craft a commonsense plan to reduce costs, expand access and increase the quality of care in a way that America can afford.

We need to create a health care plan that will ensure that the government does not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, ensure that the government does not deny care on the basis of disease or years of life left, ensure that government does not break the bank at a time when America simply cannot afford it, ensure that if you lose or change your job, you and your family would continue have to access to affordable health care coverage, ensure that if you have a preexisting condition you will not be denied access to coverage, and, finally, ensure that any medical liability reform will be real and meaningful.

I challenge my colleagues to put principle above politics and represent the will of the American people when it comes to health care reform.

Mr. Speaker, in the last few days, Iran has proven its threatening nature by conducting three rounds of missile tests, reminding us of the growing nuclear threat of Iran. Iran continues to show contempt towards the U.S. and the rest of the world through its nuclear development and the support of worldwide terrorism. Furthermore, it poses an existential threat to Israel, one of our most important allies.

Iran does not need to develop further nuclear fuel for energy, as it is a net exporter of oil even now. Rather than prepare for and deter this threat, the President has chosen to appease Moscow and Tehran by disabling a missile defense initiative with no concessions in return.

This reckless decision comes on the heels of the administration's double-digit cuts to missile defense funding and F-22 development. A Commander in Chief's first priority should always be national security, yet this decision is appeasement of current and potential enemies.

I thank my friend and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schock).

The three of us here this evening spent really an awesome time in Israel during August. But I want to take you back in time, Mr. Speaker, in history 71 years to today. Literally 71 years to today, and what we see in the newsreels. And that was that Lord Chamberlain waved a stack of papers in front of the camera and he uttered, We have peace in our time. And what was he talking about? He had just come from a meeting with Herr Adolph Hitler, and along with France and a few other nations, but not Czechoslovakia, they had come to an agreement to cede to Hitler the Sudetenland, which at that time was the strategic part of Czechoslovakia that was so necessary for their protection. He ceded that. Of course, Hitler claimed that it was mostly populated with Germans, but, nonetheless, Lord Chamberlain and others agreed to let him have it. And we know that today as a policy of appeasement.

He also said that he actually went there for the purpose of honor and peace. And then Winston Churchill, who was in the Parliament, replied that he went there for honor and peace but he returned with neither. Because we know that within months, Hitler began a very aggressive campaign and went on to, of course, not only take Czechoslovakia but also Poland. And, of course, as we say, the rest is history.

And what is that history? The history is that there were 20 million people killed during World War II, Mr. Speaker; 6 million of them were Jews. And in visiting the Holocaust Museum in Israel, in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, something very interesting, I think, occurred in my mind that I never thought about until it was brought out.

We saw a lot of very interesting things there. A lot of personal stories about families who were broken apart, most of whom died in the Holocaust, people who were in death camps, a lot of personal letters and books and eyeglasses and things like that that told individual stories. We know the factual parts of this. We have all seen the documentaries that talked about the gas chambers and the ovens. And we, of course, have heard about and read about the Final Solution and Hitler's attempt to take executing human beings to a whole new scientific level, which he was able to achieve. Nothing before and nothing since has been done.

But the important thing, Mr. Speaker, about this that we must understand that really teaches us a second lesson today: The first one being the danger of appeasement, but the second is that while the Jews were being carted off to the death camps, and, of course, many of them attempted to reach safe harbor in the United States and many other countries and were denied that and, in fact, in many cases were thrown out of other countries, there was no one to speak up for the Jews. No one, not even the United States. Even we have the blight of having turned our backs on the Jews. And there was no state, there was no country to speak up for the Jews, who at that time lived in many places of the world. And because of that, after World War II and all the countries began to come together, it was decided that the Jews would have their own homeland.

And of course we know that the U.N. provided for that, and what was then called Palestine today is called Israel. Israel is a state, and that's so important because now Jews have a country to stick up for them. They have a people who will never back down from an evil dictator like Adolf Hitler. They will stand up for their people, and they will stand up as our ally against these things.

But the interesting thing is it's often said that what we don't learn from history is destined to repeat itself. And what we have today is a Hitler-like figure, Mr. Speaker, of course, Ahmadinejad, who is saying many of the same things that Adolf Hitler said in those days, giving the same threats.

Very few people took Hitler seriously when he said that he intended to kill the Jews, and that is what he did. Now we have Ahmadinejad who is making the same statements, and we watch before our very eyes he's building a nuclear arsenal.

And what are we doing, Mr. Speaker? Well, we are talking about sanctions. And how effective are these sanctions going to be when it's necessary to have Russia and China to help us with that? And of course, all we are getting from them is rhetoric. In fact, the only thing structurally that's been done in all of this discussion is we've given up missile defense in the Czech Republic and in Poland. So we are already beginning the appeasement process in this world while we have another Hitler-like figure out there beginning to plan the destruction of the Jews once again.

So I think we need to stand, Mr. Speaker, with our brothers and sisters in Israel, in their protection. Because in as much as Israel is so capable of taking care of itself--we all know just what a small strip of land that is--and while Israel can protect itself in many ways, there is no way that Israel can protect itself from an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, and that is precisely what Iran is doing today.

And apart from that, Iran is exporting terrorism around the world. We know that Hamas and Hezbollah; we, know that al Qaeda--who is providing al Qaeda, Mr. Speaker, with the weapons they are using to kill our own sons and daughters? Again, it's Iran. So Iran is emerging as, I guess-- Ahmadinejad and certainly the mullahs behind him, are really, I think, showing a tremendous parallel to pre-World War II Germany.

And I think that we need to learn from the lessons of the past, and that is that number one, we should never allow a policy of appeasement. It never gets peace and it never gives honor. It always leads to war. It's always a matter of people overseas, folks who really are out for the destruction of others, it gives them an opening to attack other countries.

And then secondly, never again should Israel be without its own country and certainly without its friends around the world. Never again should we have a situation, Mr. Speaker, as we did during World War II that was a holocaust which, of course, we know that Ahmadinejad denies to this day.

And there are many that say, look, this is just a little strip of land out there in the middle of the desert. You've got Arabs out there and you've got Jews and they're fighting over this land. Really, if you think about it, the Jews occupied this land as far back as 3500 B.C. Islam didn't even come into existence until thousands of years later, and in fact, we know that Christianity started even before Islam.

So of course there have been three major religions that have existed there and still exist there today, and as far as I'm concerned, they can exist there forever. But I think that there's no reason to think that there isn't a legitimate right for Israel to claim that as its own state.

And in summary--and this is, I think, to kind of tie it all together, Mr. Speaker--we talked about the issue of the two-state solution, and Mr. Netanyahu believes that is the way to go. We should have two states: a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. But remember that Israel is a democracy, and just simply by being outgrown by Palestinians or Muslims, it could lose its status as a Jewish state. And I think that it's essential that we not only support this two-state solution in supporting Israel, but that we support the right for Israel to exist as a Jewish state and always will.

If the gentleman will yield back, I will just simply say that my first impression beyond the fact that Israel is such a lovely country--I mean, just gorgeous, right in the middle of the desert next to the Mediterranean Sea. And of course we were able to see the Dead Sea and many sites that are holy to us as Christians. But just how small that country is, like a postage stamp, as narrow as 5 miles at its waist. And we saw a patchwork of villages, one being Palestinian and one being Jewish, all throughout the country.

And even though, often cases there were checkpoints and there were fences between them, you couldn't really see that. All you could see looking over is you would see evidence of a Palestinian village and you would see evidence of a Jewish village all sitting there peacefully. It's almost difficult to believe how much war and how much violence has existed there for so long.

And of course with that we visited Sderot, which is, I guess, a flash point where there have been rockets hurled and that sort of thing.

So I think that was really what I found to be very impressive.

Yes, sir.

Would the gentleman yield on that point?

I appreciate the gentleman pointing out the fact that what we are doing in fact is removing a missile shield that is just before deployment, that would go into the Czech Republic, that would go into Poland. It would be, of course, subsurface. It would be something that would help defend much of that region of the country, including 80 American military bases; and, instead, we are going to exchange it for a whole different, a ship-based system which requires, first of all, a lot of development that is not yet in place.

As you point out, it is going to be another decade before it will even be capable. It would require ships being in exactly the right place at the right time. And it also begs the point: If Iran is developing nuclear material just for civilian purposes, why do they need all of this rocketry ability? They just ran a test, a three-rocket test, one of which had a range of 1,500 miles. Now why do you need that? I'm pretty sure Iran is not planning to go to the Moon. So for what purpose is that?

And what is also, I think, ironic is the fact that our President is talking about renewing the STAR treaty and taking our already reduced nuclear weapons down to an even lower level. If we do this with Russia at the same time as there are more countries than ever that have more nuclear weapons and more capability to deliver those weapons than ever, so again it goes back to the appeasement question: Does it make sense to unilaterally disarm yourself while your potential enemies, and I would say in this case with Iran, our enemy, because they are killing our men and women through their proxies and through their surrogates and their weapons. Why in the world would we be doing that when in fact we have a growing threat from them?

And going back to Israel, it seems that wherever you see the U.S. military around the world, peace breaks out. You look at World War II, troops were in Japan, troops were in the Philippines, they were in France, they were in England and Germany. All those countries now are very peaceful democracies. And of course we went into Iraq, and Iraq is evolving into an oasis, if you will, of democracy, as is Israel.

So it seems to me that we need to stay on the same post-World War II course of certainly using Theodore Roosevelt's old philosophy, ``speak softly but carry a big stick,'' rather than using a lot of rhetoric about all the things that we want to do and all the sanctions we want to take and yet disarm ourselves and our friends at the same time.

Certainly, one only has to ask around the world who is happy with this right now and who isn't. Well, it turns out our friends are unhappy with us and our enemies are happy with us all the way from Venezuela to Iran to Russia. They are all happy with everything we've been doing lately and the decisions our President has been making. We found out while we were in Israel that the President has a 4 percent, yes, 4 percent favorability rating. They are very unhappy with his position on Iran right now and also on the Palestinian question.

So I think that it's certainly nice to be liked overseas; but when you're liked by your enemies and also of course Poland and the Czech Republic are unhappy with us right now because we left them in the dust after agreeing to put a missile shield there and then pulling out after they've gone out on a limb for us, I think we are going, Mr. Speaker, in the wrong direction in the way we deal with our friends and our enemies in and around this question of Iran and the nuclear weapons that they have.

With that, I will yield back to my friends.

I would just say I would like to thank Congressman Schock for having this Special Order hour this evening so that we could talk about this important issue, and it's one that we're going to be talking about a lot more in the coming days because it's pretty apparent that all of these issues are beginning to line up. They're beginning to stack up very rapidly.

And of course, the issue that we know our friends and Israel are facing is that if we are unable to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table or to have sanctions that work, then they're still the last option left on the table, which they reserve the right as a sovereign Nation to do, and that is, potentially take out the nuclear facilities in Iran.

We pray that it doesn't come to that, but it has already of course in Syria and Iraq back in the Hussein days, and we are looking for peaceful solutions. But we have counterweight around the world in Russia and China that as soon as we try to do one thing they want to reverse it. Russia is a very significant trading partner with Iran. They're providing Iran with a state-of-the-art SAM missile system which is going to close the window for the capability of Israel to potentially attack Iran's nuclear facilities if that needs to be done, which is all the more important why decisions are having to be made at an even faster pace.

So, once again, I thank Mr. Schock for bringing us together for this hour.

I thank my colleague, Gentlewoman Bachmann, for providing leadership in this hour and particularly on the subject of health care.

You know, Mr. Speaker, there is really a fundamental economic, that I think we always have to go back to. I practiced family medicine for over 30 years, still practice from time to time.

There is something very important that we all need to learn. That is that, yes, Medicare and Medicaid is government-run health care. If you ask the average person who has Medicare, they will say they are happy with it.

But there is a very important reason why they say this. Medicare currently pays a fraction of the actual cost and delivery of Medicare care.

So who pays the rest? The rest is paid for by private insurance. Private insurance today subsidizes Medicare and Medicaid. If you ask the average physician in practice, he or she will tell you that they can only have a certain number of Medicare and Medicaid patients in their office. Otherwise, they become insolvent.

So when the President says, Well, we need to have this government-run option to pull the cost of private insurance down, that really defies reasoning. It's really upside down from what economically is going on.

What is happening is, when you make your private insurance payment to the tune of about $1,800 per family per year, what you are really finding is that that is the subsidy that goes for Medicare.

So, if you enlarge Medicare or government-run health care in general, and you artificially depress the price, which is what the President and H.R. 3200, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle call for, what will in fact happen is you will cause the cost of health care, private insurance premiums, to actually accelerate.

Under this plan, the employers are given the option: They can either pay 8 percent as a fine, if you will, or a tax, and dump their employees into this plan, this government-run option, or they can try to continue to keep up with the growing cost of private insurance. Over time and through competition, employers will be forced to dump their employees into enlarging, if you will, a black hole, a public option or government-run medicine.

What we end up with at the very end of the day is a very small flange, if you will, of private insurance, that which we all know and appreciate today. And everyone else, of course, is in this large government-run system.

Who will be left in the private insurance market? Well, it will be the very healthy, it will be the elite and, of course, Members of Congress.

I proposed House Resolution 615, and I have many of my colleagues, now, who have signed on to it and over a million Americans who have signed in support of it, that simply says that if a Congressman votes for the public option, he or she should be willing to sign up for it themselves. So far I have not had one person on the other side of the aisle who has also signed up for that.

In closing, let me say that we also need to focus on who the insured group is. You have heard this number: 46 million Americans who are uninsured. Well, who is that group?

About 10 million of them actually are not Americans at all. They are illegal immigrants. Ten to perhaps 17 million of them are young healthy adults, what we call the invincibles, who have opted out of the insurance, who have decided it's not worth the money because they are healthy anyway.

We also have a number who are eligible for Medicaid but simply don't sign up for it. Really what we have is 10 million Americans who qualify for health insurance as Americans, but they can't afford it because of a preexisting illness or a current illness; the expense is too high. Perhaps they own a small business or they are employees of a small business. Because the risk pool is so small, they simply can't find affordable insurance. All of that is fixable for that targeted 10 million Americans who want insurance but can't buy it.

Instead, Mr. Speaker, what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle want us to do is totally dismantle the best health care system in the world and put in place a UK- or Canadian-style medicine, form of medicine, form of health care, which provides universal coverage but not universal care.

What do I mean by that? Certainly, I think we can all agree that care delayed is care denied.

In America today, those who are uninsured still can go to the emergency room and, by law, be treated for whatever ails them, even if they don't have the ability to pay for it. In fact, we are not even allowed to ask them, as providers, whether they can afford that.

If someone has needed surgery, perhaps, or they need to be admitted to the hospital for lifesaving treatment, it's going to be done. Now, you take the UK, you take Canada and much of Europe, yes, they have coverage. But what good is coverage if it takes 4 years to get the treatment?

The average waiting time in Canada today is a year to get an MRI scan. Then after the scan is done, you get in line for the needed surgery. Talking in my district, a lot of folks in my district have relatives back in Canada. One lady said, Well, my brother tore his rotator cuff, but it took a year to get an MRI. When he finally saw the doctor, it was too late to repair it. The definition of elective surgery in Canada is surgery that's not lifesaving. For us, elective surgery is surgery that you elect to have. You don't necessarily need to have it.

Mr. Speaker, I really think that we on this side of the aisle have won the debate on this issue. The American people agree with us today, 56 versus 32 percent, that the current health care we have today is better than this Obama care or this government-run option.

The problem is, we still have Members of Congress, we have Members of the Senate and even a President, who insist on going down that road and taking one-sixth of our entire economy and reforming it into a socialist government-run system. I think if we look back on what the government is doing today and what it has done in the past, whether you are talking about the post office, which has a $9 billion deficit, whether you are talking about Medicare itself, which will run out of money completely within 8 years, and all the fraud, waste and abuse that exists there, and the $350 billion that our President says he is going to save out of that, when after 40 years not one single politician has been able to find the solution to that problem. I think it's really the wrong decision to make, to have more government control of our health care.

With that, I appreciate so much my good friend, Michele Bachmann, for inviting me and allowing me to participate in this discussion today.

Mr. Speaker, it was recently reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a gag order on private insurance companies to prevent them from providing information to their beneficiaries regarding the administration's proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage and how the Democrat health reform could take away their current coverage.

The CBO, by the way, agrees with this. That is a fact that coverage is being taken away.

However, the one entity not being affected by this gag order is the AARP, which has been a prime advocate of the Democrats' government takeover of health care. Even as AARP advocates for cutting Medicare Advantage plans by more than $150 billion, an analysis of the organization's operation reveals that it stands to receive tens of millions of dollars at the expense of seniors' medical care. Under the Democrats' plan, seniors are going to have to fund kickbacks to AARP- sponsored plans, and there isn't a single provision attempting to impose any new restrictions on AARP policies.

Did CMS somehow forget to include AARP among the organizations whose First Amendment rights to inform seniors of harmful Medicare provisions were restricted, or did the administration only wish to silence its critics?

Well, I thank the gentleman, Mr. Akin, for the question.

Of course, I, among all of our Republican colleagues and our Democrat colleagues, was here to hear the President make these statements, and it's very interesting when he said not one dime would be spent, and yet I don't know of anyone in America who agrees with that. Even the CBO, who is led by someone who was actually appointed by him, says that even with all of the razzle dazzle and the sleight of hand and pulling rabbits out of the hat, still there's $256 billion that's not covered, and that's after the $500 billion that's being gutted from Medicare, as you adroitly pointed out.

Well, it is a two-step situation. About $350 billion.

That is the first step. The second step is nearly another $200 billion that comes out of Medicare Advantage. So the total comes to something well over $500 billion, half a trillion dollars.

Well, $350 billion would be from the so-called fraud, waste and abuse. The other $150 or so billion, almost $200 billion, would be to directly tear down, dismantle, if you will Medicare Advantage.

It seems to me that it is easy to do on paper, but this program is over 40 years old. And every politician that has come along has promised to do away with fraud, waste and abuse. Not one has been able to do it, and our President nor our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have even hinted how that would be accomplished.

A point you raised, Mr. Akin, is a very important one that is often left out of the debate, and that is that Medicare and Medicaid are paying such low rates, far below cost in many cases, that it is only the private insurance market that is making up the difference, that keeps doctors solvent and keeps their offices open. If you look at the increase in private insurance premiums and the fact, and the President points this out frequently, the rate of increases is higher than inflation, well, what is causing that is the government-run health care that we already have which is being subsidized by the private market.

Exactly. People say how will this ever lead--what you really have is a competing public plan against private plans, and how will this lead to rationing and long lines? The bottom line is, when you artificially suppress the income to the providers, doctors and hospitals and DME companies and so forth, what you end up with is really an artificial market which then is being collapsed in the private sector into a public sector market, and there is no way that is going to control costs, short of long lines.

Well, I will just briefly comment, because I know we have got other speakers here who are anxious to get on the record tonight.

The whole concept behind SGR, sustained growth rate, is that the government in its infinite wisdom said, Well, out in the future someplace, we're going to spend no more than this many dollars, and the doctors are going to have to get together amongst themselves--the hundreds of thousands of them--and decide how they're going to do that. Of course the obvious thing occurred. How in the world are doctors and hospitals going to be able to do that? Anybody under part B.

As far as I know, I was never invited to a conference call. I have never received an e-mail about it. I just went along, practicing everyday, like my colleagues do. All of a sudden we are told, we're spending above the SGR rate. It goes back to exactly what our debate is today. We can pick and choose a number out there in the future that's going to be a goal, and we are going to practice and spend less than that amount. But that does not affect the day-to-day behavior inside the exam room, which is, again, why our bill H.R. 3400 is so important because it gets to the behavior and the decision-making between the doctor and the patient. That is where the money is saved. Not in some conceptual decision made out in the future that we're going to spend only this many billions of dollars next year or the coming years.

And that's why the SGR is an abysmal failure. Of course we all know that it's really a joke. We do a patch every year, but it never would work, and it never will work.

If the gentleman would yield.

There were also attempts by my friends, Dr. Gingrey and others, to actually say, well, okay, if this is fuzzy language and if we're going to debate this and say it's ambiguous and if some say it does cover illegals and some say it doesn't, let's just settle it by putting an amendment into the bill that will settle that for good.

Yes.

My understanding is the amendment failed according to party line.

Yes.

Yes.

Will the gentleman yield?

Some might say that that's anecdotal, but let me point this out: for all cancers, 66.3 percent of American men and 63.9 percent of American women survive. In Europe, it's 47.3 and 55.8. So we're not talking about just a single story like you gave, which, I think, is representative. What we're talking about across the board are statistically significant differences in cancer survival rates in the U.S. versus Canada versus Europe.

For all cancers it's 66.3 for men and 63.9 for women.

Yes, versus Europe, which is 47.3 percent.

Absolutely.

Madam Speaker, as we debate health care reform, little attention has been paid to the impact that our Nation's broken medical liability system has on rising medical costs.

There are 125,000 lawsuits against physicians at any given time; 75 percent of the suits are closed without payment to the plaintiff, and in 83 percent of the cases going to trial, physicians are cleared. This means there is very little correlation between lawsuits and actual malpractice. More than that, the current system pushes doctors to overtest and overtreat to avoid being hauled into the courtroom, costing Americans billions of dollars in taxes and higher premiums. In a few cases in which there is a judgment, much of the money goes to pay lawyers, not the aggrieved patient.

Furthermore, the current system is driving physicians out of needed specialties. Recent studies show that one in seven obstetricians no longer delivers babies, and 49 percent of American counties don't even have an OB, largely because of high malpractice costs.

If the President and Democrats are serious about controlling high health care costs, they must call on trial lawyers to share in the sacrifice and to reform the medical liability system.

Mr. Speaker, the President has claimed that his policies are going to reduce the skyrocketing national deficit, but I would like to spend just a moment to debunk this myth.

Rather than reducing the deficit, the President's budget calls for a $9 trillion deficit over the next 10 years, 6 trillion higher than the CBO predicted just in January when he took office. Even according to the White House, the national debt will more than double in 10 years. The President's own numbers showed that the national debt will be 107 percent of GDP by 2019.

In the month of August, there were 14.92 million unemployed individuals looking for work, the highest number in history. Since February, when the Democrats passed their stimulus, 2.46 million people have lost their jobs.

And while the President promised that billions of dollars would go into shovel-ready construction projects that would help rebuild infrastructure and employ hundreds of thousands, transportation spending from the stimulus has only trickled out at a snail's pace.

Given this administration's track record, why wouldn't the American people be skeptical about $1.6 trillion for health care reform?

Mr. Speaker, the President's speech in this Chamber last night was the 28th speech about the same old tired plan, and it totally ignored the facts. Rhetoric and empty promises are not going to solve the health care challenges Americans face. Americans have spoken in number and force against the same proposals the President endorsed last night.

Americans want health care reform that will not expand government intrusion into health care or undermine what works in our health care system today.

Contrary to the President's claim that Republicans have no solutions, I support H.R. 3400, the Republican solution: health reform that will expand coverage to those who need it regardless of preexisting conditions. It also expands insurance pools across State lines and encourages young, healthy people to buy insurance to bring down costs for everyone.

Individuals and small businesses can be encouraged to band together to purchase group health coverage for themselves or their employees, and we can save billions by limiting frivolous lawsuits against physicians that have driven many out of business altogether.