Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, this is about American jobs, the American family and the American economy. Here are the plain facts.

Natural gas costs less than a $1.50 per Btu in Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, but here in the United States this one report had it at $8.85, and it has been as high as $13. This means homeowners pay about $200 more to heat their homes. This means the United States steel, for every dollar the price of natural gas goes up, costs them $80 million.

If you are a company and you ask yourself where are you going to build or where are you going to move to, we have already lost 90,000 jobs in the chemical industry. We have lost 3 million jobs in the manufacturing industry due to energy prices.

We talk about the law of supply and demand of the 1990s. Ninety percent of new electric energy plants use natural gas. World demands have gone up. It is expected about a 90 percent increase in natural gas demands in the next 10 years, but since 1982 this Nation had a self- imposed moratorium on offshore natural gas and oil drilling.

Here is the real law of supply and demand we need to look at now. Americans are demanding that lawmakers increase the supply. We cannot afford to continue to have these high gas prices and send jobs to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Iran and Russia or let other countries do with natural gas prices like they did with Ukraine and double the prices on them. We cannot compete as a nation for jobs with this.

It is no wonder the building trades have come out with a very strongly worded letter and said, please, let us start lowering the prices for goods and services in America. People get up here time and time again and say China is eating us for lunch. What are we doing here? We are cutting our own legs off and destroying jobs in America.

We have abundant supplies of natural gas. We can protect the coastline. This will not be within 3 miles. It takes entirely different legislation to do that, but please, please, let us save jobs in America for a change and stop talking about it.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained prior to rollcall 137 this morning and was not able to vote. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall 137.

Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was unable to be present for the following rollcall votes today due to a death in the family. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 5143, ``yea'' on House Resolution 805, and ``yea'' on House Resolution 806.

Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was unable to be present for today's rollcall votes due to a death in the family. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 1499, ``yea'' on H.R. 5037, and ``yea'' on H.R. 3829.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time and your continued leadership in helping this Nation understand the importance of the Medicare prescription drug plan.

I wanted to echo with you the issues involved with this, which are so important not only to our constituents but actually to people across the Nation as they look at this and reflect back a couple of years ago when many folks were traveling to Canada, looking at trying to import some medications from around the world in an attempt to save money.

The net result of that, the overall savings that came from importing medications from Canada as opposed to price shopping in America, was not that dramatic. And compared to our generic medications, generics still saved a lot more money. But nonetheless, many folks were searching for ways to find less expensive medications.

Secondly, when people were involved in importing drugs from around the world, from Web sites or mail order, what they found many times were counterfeit medications. In one case they were supposed to be a prescription medication, but they were white pills that said the word ``aspirin.'' It is not hard to guess what those were.

In other situations they were completely counterfeited by using paint and other materials to try and make the pills mimic professionally manufactured medications. In other words, people were attempting to save money, and spent more after paying for counterfeit medications.

So along came the prescription drug plan, and people reported to me they did find savings. Some looked at their VA program and were happy with that. In Pennsylvania, we have what is called the PACE program, or the Prescription Assistance Contract for the Elderly. Many were happy with that, and that is fine.

Others said as they looked at their Medicare benefits, they found significant savings. One woman, as she was looking through that, told me she was saving hundreds of dollars. The point is it was voluntary. People compared different plans and found what saved money for them. The main thing is getting people on the medication that they need, rather than trying to seek some discount plan that really does not save them money.

Of course, there are other parts of this Medicare bill that we recognize. One is getting people their checkup with their doctor so someone can review their needs; and also having pharmacists review the medications people take to make sure that we are avoiding duplication and improper doses, which also add costs.

We have to remember one of the ways to reduce the cost of medicine is not just look at discounts and ways the government can help supplement payments, but also patients need to make sure that they are taking only the drugs they need. When people see multiple doctors and go to multiple pharmacists, that is one of the huge risks that occur for senior citizens where they end up with medical problems.

One study read, and I think the CDC sponsored this, it said in Medicare alone, taking the wrong doses for the wrong person has contributed to some $29 billion in costs that were avoidable. So it is important to have all medications coordinated under one plan rather than going to multiple doctors and multiple pharmacists.

But not only is it important for us to look at this program to provide medications that are affordable, but it is also important for us to note when people look at the cost of the prescription drug program for Medicare, what they consistently fail to take into account is what money it saves for health care overall.

I am going to read a couple of points about some medications, and I recognize, although I work in the field of psychology, some of these are areas of expertise for some of the other physicians here on the floor. Some comments I will make, and Dr. Gingrey has commented on this too, that taking the correct medication is a money-saving as well as a life-saving factor that unfortunately the Congressional Budget Office and others who have looked at the cost of the Medicare prescription drug never take into account.

Here is one point dealing with heart disease. Patients with heart failure who are treated with beta-blockers live longer, and treatment costs are about $4,000 lower than patients who do not take these medications. A January 2004 study by Duke researchers found that beta- blocker therapy improves clinical outcomes of heart failure patients and is cost saving to society and Medicare.

Looking more broadly, the researchers found that 5 years of treatment for heart failure without beta-blockers cost a total of $53,000. But with beta-blockers, treatment cost fell by $4,000, and patient survival increased by an average of 3\1/2\ months.

Here is a study on depression. New medicines have brought down the cost of treating depression in the 1990s by reducing the need for hospitalization. Medications like Prozac and Paxil are responsible for this. New studies show how newer, better medicines reduce the cost of treating patients with depression. The cost of treating a depressed person fell throughout the 1990s, largely because of a switch from hospitalization to medication and psychotherapy, one study said.

A study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in December 2003 found that per-patient spending on depression actually fell by nearly 20 percent over the course of the 1990s.

A study on diabetes indicated that medicines that control diabetes help prevent serious complications, reducing the cost of care by about $747 per patient every year. New diabetes medicines are helping patients avoid serious complications and death, and can reduce overall health care spending. One recent study found that effective treatment of diabetes with medicines and other therapy yields annual health care savings of $700 to $950 per patient within 1 to 2 years.

Another study corroborated these results, finding that the use of a disease management program to control diabetes, along with medication and patient education, generated savings of $747 per patient per year.

I might add that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found when they engage these disease management programs, they reduced hospitalizations by some 75 percent.

Let me mention Alzheimer's disease. One Alzheimer's medicine was found to reduce spending on skilled nursing facilities and hospital stays. A study of the effects on costs in a Medicare managed care plan showed that, although the prescription cost for the group receiving the drug were over $1,000 higher per patient, the overall medical costs fell to $8,000 compared with $11,947 for the group not receiving drug treatment. This one-third savings was as a result of reduced costs in other areas such as hospital and skilled nursing facilities.

So one of the things that is so important for citizens to take into account as they look at these programs is to please understand not only the cost savings the program has overall, but the more that patients get engaged in following the prescriptions, following the doctor's orders, not only for the medicines themselves but patient education, diet, other therapies that may be recommended, the overall cost of health care goes down. And that is one of the untold stories of how the prescription drug plan works. It saves lives and saves money.

Overall, if Congress continues to pay attention to the bigger picture of how using electronic medical records and electronic prescribing, patient management profiles, to use integrated care of looking at psychiatric care coordinated with medical care, to look at some of these many areas, we will continue to see, I believe, massive savings in health care, which is what we want to do. We want to coordinate all of these efforts in health care so it is not just a matter of saying health care is too expensive, so let us increase copays or deductibles or premiums or reduce coverage. None of those are viable alternatives. Nor is a method used to reduce payments to doctors or hospitals. That

is shifting the cost of care, that is not improving care. And this Medicare prescription drug plan which coordinates those benefits so much better for patients is a very important aspect that we encourage people to take a look at.

I commend Dr. Gingrey for his work on maintaining this important issue and bringing it before the American public to review and understand. I am sure you agree that the issue of the medication, when we only look at the cost up front and not look at the cost of what it saves, we are missing the point. That involves a lot of foresight by those who drafted this legislation to make sure there was coordination of medical treatment and that it was put into this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise with a somber mood to recognize a citizen, a patriot, a soldier who gave his life for a cause he believed in serving his country as a soldier in Iraq.

Mark Melcher lived in Pittsburgh his entire life. He grew up on the north side watching the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins play, and graduated the from North Catholic High School in 1989. Soon afterwards, he joined the Army. He served in Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait.

Following the 1991 conflict to liberate Kuwait, Mark returned home to begin working at the Mellon Financial Corporation. He then served in the National Guard's lst Battalion, 103rd Armored Division located in Friedens, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Mark departed for military training on the morning of Sunday, February 5th. Sadly, on April 15, 2006, just a month after arriving in theater, Mark was killed when his tank he manned came under fire outside of Baghdad. He was 34 years old. He is survived by his parents, Kathy and John Melcher, Sr., of Ross, Pennsylvania. I commend the deepest sympathies of all Members of this House to the Melcher family.

Also I offer the gratitude of every American. We should never forget his devotion of duty, his love of country. Today and every day let us give thanks to Mark Melcher, his family, and indeed all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and the marines.

John Melcher, Sr., Mark's father, said of Mark, my son believed in the cause, he loved his country, gave his life for his country. You don't get any better than that. Yes, sir, Mr. Melcher, you do not get any better than that.

I thank the distinguished doctor from Georgia for yielding to me and for your important information for our colleagues and really for our Nation to understand the importance of the Medicare prescription drug plan.

Some of the things said will bear repeating several times over the next few weeks, and one of the points I want to talk about, as you have discussed as well, is misinformation that is sent out about this plan.

Any time something is new, there is going to be some glitches. All of us, when our children were new, well, we knew as parents we didn't exactly know everything we were doing and we had a foul-up or two, but we persevered and our children turned out well. No matter what one does in life, when it is something new in learning the ropes of it, it is going to take a little adjustment.

But as we were signing up 27 million seniors at a rate sometimes approaching 400,000 a week, the system wasn't always perfectly ready for all of them, and there were some glitches, particularly for some folks who were dual eligible.

But the point is HHS or Medicare responded, put extra people on board, worked out some of the glitches, and I am pleased to say that many of the seniors that I talked to are very pleased with this program.

As a matter of fact, I was recently giving a town hall meeting, there must have been 200 people in the audience there, and I asked how many of them have yet to sign up for a Medicare plan? Not a single hand went up. It seems that all of them had looked at the plan at that point, and that Pennsylvania had chosen a number of things.

One gentleman decided to stick with the veterans plan. He liked that. He had served in the military for many years now as a veteran. Another woman was pleased that she could maintain the Pennsylvania PACE plan for low income seniors that worked well for her. Another woman said she was actually saving several hundred dollars so far, and it was only March, with the Medicare prescription drug plan.

It is folks like this who really tell the truth about what is going on. While politicians may be out there trying to scare seniors, it is the seniors themselves that are perhaps the best salesmen saying it is valuable.

It was only a short period ago that the stories that were always in the newspapers were of seniors getting on board busses and going off to Canada to pick up their prescription drugs, or perhaps using mail order systems to

try to pick up prescription drugs. But I want to point out a couple of things that is important that.

One, a study of the overall costs of traveling off to Canada, it turns out that the overall cost savings was probably only around 1 percent when you looked at it. But AARP and others have said that actually the savings that comes from the Medicare prescription drug plan are at least equal to and sometimes better than traveling across the Nation's lines to pick up drugs.

Also a very, very important savings factor here is not just a matter of saving money, but saving lives. And in the process of seniors trying to find drugs that are affordable to them, Mr. Speaker, what they are also doing is getting on the Internet or going through mail order houses and trying to pick up prescription drugs from foreign sources and tragically finding that those sources contain counterfeit drugs.

One, a drug used to treat schizophrenia, it turned out to be nothing more than white pills that said the word aspirin on them. Other medications had water in them that was tainted. Other ones may have had paint or foreign substances in them.

The point is, not only were they sometimes toxic in and of themselves, but in not treating the illness, the things that went with that is sometimes having seniors take medications that they could have been allergic to or take medications that certainly, at the very least, were not treating their illness.

By having an affordable prescription drug plan, what we have instead is getting the right medicines to the right people so that they are taking medications that are valuable to them and can help treat their illnesses.

But let me point out some more things we have to understand, because as people also look at the expense of a prescription drug plan, we have to understand that, unfortunately, the way this system works in this Federal Government, the Congressional Budget Office doesn't ever tell us how much we save. But take a listen at a couple of these points.

First of all, ulcer surgery has become a relic of the past. New drugs, Nexium, Prilosec, other things we have seen advertised, really have ended up treating ulcers so well that surgical procedures to correct ulcers has fallen, and today it is really a thing of the past.

Medicines also reduce hospitalizations and surgery for heart disease. Drugs that reduce, for example, cholesterol levels and other things that in the past had been an automatic admission to a hospital and bypass surgery and angioplasty now we find are going down.

Medications to treat Alzheimer's diseases. Medications that have also worked out there to improve the cognitive functioning over time and keeping people out of long-term care and nursing care longer.

Also, listen to this, overall new medicines play a significant role in the life expectancy gains made in the U.S. and around the world. Recent research published in the Journal of Health Affairs concludes that new medicines generated 40 percent of the 2-year gain in life expectancy achieved in 52 countries between 1986 and 2000. In other words, we are not only providing medications that are affordable, but medications are now there that providing better and longer life for many seniors.

The list goes on with so many more, cancer drugs, drugs to treat AIDS, HIV, drugs that prevent stroke, that improve quality of life of children. There is a wide range.

But the main thing is before the Medicaid prescription drug plan came into effect, so many seniors, well, it was much like window shopping. You could look in the shop and admire the merchandise, but you couldn't go in to get it. Now that has changed. And that is a message that we need to be telling across America as we are doing tonight and our colleagues are going to do during this break.

It is of no value, as a matter of fact, it is a negative value and of questionable ethical value I think sometimes if people only spend their time criticizing the glitches that have been in the program, as with any program that occurs, whether it is a public or private program, criticizing it, standing on the outside and frightening seniors, frightening seniors into thinking that because there was complexities and difficulties, therefore they should not sign up.

I worry about this, Mr. Speaker. I worry because when I have held town meetings and I have heard seniors say ``I heard this is difficult; I don't think I can understand it so I have been holding off doing it,'' my worry in those circumstances, when the people are just playing politics with patients and frightening seniors away from this program, what happens if a senior needed medication and they did not get it because someone frightened them away?

The point is, if one dials 1-800-Medicare, they can talk to someone who is helpful. If they go on to web sites, Medicare.gov, they can get the information that they need. They can sit down with a family member or friends. And many drugstores, many pharmacists throughout the Nation will provide the kind of consultation free of charge to help seniors walk through this. But they need their name, address, their Social Security number, the names of the drugs they are on, the dosage levels they take, the prices they pay.

And don't just compare what it is today when you have the deductibles and copays. Look at what happens to the long-term costs throughout the year and look at those prices and determine which of the many plans available are the best ones for you. That is the message we should be telling seniors.

You know, so often in America we criticize that costs go up when people do not have a choice. Here with Medicare, people do have a choice. They have a choice of looking through many, several plans. They have a choice of doing nothing at all, quite frankly. But it is something that is available to seniors. And the main thing about this is having the availability of medications which can be lifesaving and life extending and help the quality of life, make the difference between someone who may be bound up in a nursing home and someone who is still at their home, those are the kinds of stories that Americans need to be talking about.

While there are those criticizing frightening seniors, let's remember this. Instead of frightening seniors, we should be thinking this: 27 million seniors have signed up for this program so far, and many more will sign up in the next few weeks. Those 27 million seniors can't all be wrong. And instead of politicians mocking them and mocking the program, maybe, just maybe, we would all do better to link our arms and say let's do what we can to help every senior get the medications they need. And even if they don't need them now, to sign up for a program, just like you don't need homeowner's insurance today if your house isn't on fire, you don't need automobile insurance today if you haven't had an accident, but you have it there in case you do.

Sometimes with low costs in Pennsylvania, I know it can be as little as $10 a month. Someone can at least have the piece of mind of knowing it is there when they need it. These are the things we need, Mr. Chairman. And to my colleague, Dr. Gingrey, I am so pleased that you have done so much to help seniors throughout the Nation know this and help our colleagues know this.

There is the deadline coming up next month for seniors to sign up, and it is good news that so many seniors are looking towards that deadline to sign up. Some have waited a little bit and want to see some glitches out of the program. Many of those are being addressed now. I certainly congratulate the Secretary of Health and Human Services for all of the work he has been doing to get this message out.

But we are not done, and as colleagues we need to be working together for the sake of our patients. Let's stop playing political games and really do what is right and decent and honorable for America's seniors.

I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank you so much for sharing the time.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 744, which honors the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 for being what I believe is, as the resolution states, ``the blueprint for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.''

Next Monday, April 10, 2006 will mark the 8th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which has helped to bring nearly a decade of peace to Northern Ireland. As a result of the historic Good Friday Agreement, there is perhaps a greater potential for lasting peace in Northern Ireland now than perhaps ever, since the establishment of the Irish Republic. The Good Friday Agreement has outlined a plan for peace and reconciliation in the 21st century.

I believe the most significant result of the Good Friday Agreement was the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly, a devolved government body that has facilitated important debate between the political parties. Consequently, problems have been directly and civilly addressed through free and open debate. Unfortunately, as my colleagues know, due to disagreements between the political parties--the Social Democrat and Labor Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and Sinn Fein--the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since October of 2002. Ever since, the British government has taken direct control over the government to ensure stability. I would hope all sides can agree to terms in order to allow the Assembly to be reestablished.

Madam Speaker, I have met with the leaders of Sinn Fein, the DUP, the UUP and the SDLP, both here in the U.S. and in Ireland. All parties have conveyed to me that they agree it is vital for the future security of the North that new elections be held, an Executive put in place, and the legislative assembly reconvened. I agree with this view, and express the support of the U.S. House of Representatives to facilitate the peace process.

I thank the distinguished Chairman of the International Relations Committee, Mr. Hyde, for authoring this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, according to the Centers for Disease Control, every 6 minutes someone in this country dies from an infection they picked up in a hospital. That is 90,000 people and a total cost of $50 billion. Yet when hospitals adhere to patient safety measures, they can dramatically reduce these infections.

A hospital in Oklahoma performed 400 surgeries without an infection. A hospital in Pittsburgh reduced these infections greatly and saved millions of dollars. A hospital in St. Louis received savings of $1.5 million.

I am pleased that the Energy and Commerce Committee will take up this issue and hold hearings on this in a couple of weeks. We need to take action and save lives. At this time when we get so concerned about so many issues in America, is it not time that Congress tackled these issues head-on and worked out such issues as pay-for-performance incentives through Medicare and Medicaid to greatly reduce infections and save thousands of lives?

To learn more on this, people can look at my Web site at murphy.house.gov.

Mr. Speaker, I will be joined in a little bit by my friend and my colleague, Dr. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, for this next hour. It is important that we lay out a large segment of what we believe is a critically important agenda to reform health care in America.

We know that few things are more valuable to us than the health of our families. When the health of our families is threatened, we feel frightened, we feel vulnerable, and we desperately search for help. I think few would challenge that the United States provides, as available, the best health care in the world, dedicated and caring physicians and nurses and hospitals and professionals, and we have made huge technological advances in fighting disease and prolonging life. Our research and medical technology is second to none. It significantly advances every year.

However, despite these many accomplishments, the American health care system is burdened by severe problems that lower quality and increase costs and too often make this system unaffordable and inaccessible for millions of Americans. Too many families, unfortunately, are only able to window-shop for health care coverage, and they feel as though they cannot go into the store.

Tonight, those colleagues of ours on our side of the aisle, who are part of our health care team, will be talking about a number of important issues to advance this cause. Mr. Speaker, before I go into this, let me pause, if I may, for a moment, and say usually when I have been here for Special Orders to talk about issues, I traditionally was walking up to the Capitol to make a call to my mother to let her know. She then would get on the phones and call all her friends. My mother was a nurse, worked for many years at hospitals in Cleveland, as well as in industrial settings.

I am sad to say that since I last spoke in the Chamber, my mother had died, but I am sure she is still doing her own method of notifying her friends, and meeting my father now to talk to him and to say, make sure you pay attention to this message.

It is a message that I hope Americans will attend to as well. Because while there are those who talk about the costs of health care, what we are going to be talking about tonight is ways of changing health care and not simply shifting the burden of health care to one or the other.

Let me talk about a few of the costs that we need to pay attention to. Health care costs are skyrocketing. In 2005, the Federal Government spent over 45 percent of mandatory spending on health care programs, including almost $300 billion for Medicare and $181 billion for Medicaid. Medicaid costs now consume about 70 percent of States' budgets, and it is rising more than the rate of inflation. This, nearly half a trillion dollars, does not even include the billions that we spend at the Federal level in discretionary health care spending for Department of Veterans Affairs, $31 billion; the National Institutes of Health, which has increased over 100 percent in the last 10 years under President Bush, to $28.5 billion; the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, $8.2 billion; the Indian Health Services, $4 billion; Early Head Start, $6.8 billion; and the Women, Infants and Children program, $5.3 billion.

When we add to this also the costs paid for by employers and paid for by families across the Nation, the numbers are staggering.

The Federal Government has made a number of attempts over the years to deal with some of these increased costs, such things as dealing with the budget, where we try and increase copayments on prescription drugs, or we deal with premium costs in private or federally or State-funded health care programs, which have all been geared towards trying to share the costs.

This higher cost-sharing requirement, in many cases, is designed to not only reduce some of the overall costs to the Federal budget, but also to help encourage patients to change some behaviors, such as not going to expensive emergency room settings for common ailments, such as colds and flu and scrapes and bumps, but instead to see their doctor. These increased copays are usually enacted to change these behaviors, and yet we need to be doing other things in order to actually change some of the flaws in our health care system.

But let us make a point of this: whenever Congress has enacted those important issues to try and change some behaviors and actually save money, unfortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which is there to tell us how much we are spending and give us some accurate numbers, simply is unable to do this at all.

The Congressional Budget Office can only talk about savings when more money comes out of pocket, but they cannot and are unable to talk about savings that come from trying to prevent the problems we are talking about tonight.

Since the CBO does not provide what is called dynamic scoring, a potential cost savings, the Federal Government in essence ties its own hands so we can only focus on cost sharing and not directly change efficiency and reduce errors in health care. We do not deal with the biggest drivers of these costs. We did not have a way here to look at this.

Let me give you an example. If we were to ask the Congressional Budget Office how much it costs to immunize children in America or to inoculate them with several important inoculations that they receive in their infancy and young childhood, the CBO could give us that number. But ask them what this saves, what this saves in reduced hospital visits and the other medical complications, and they simply are not able to tell you.

Ask the Federal Government CBO what treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse save, and they cannot tell you.

Ask them what Early Head Start's medical programs save when we get children to the doctor early. They cannot tell you.

Ask also what would happen if we made our medical records system more efficient and eliminated many of the costly errors in the system. They cannot tell you.

The CBO can tell us that, in the Deficit Reduction Act passed by the House, that $150 million was placed in there, through efforts of my office and others, in order to help hospitals in high Medicaid areas use electronic medical records in order to reduce costs. But, unfortunately, the CBO cannot tell us what those costs are.

I am going to be talking a little bit more about these costs, but first I would like to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Phil Gingrey, to lay out some general outlines of some other things we are going to be talking about tonight. Dr. Gingrey, a friend and colleague, who we often are on the floor together talking on these health care aspects, will lay out in general some of the things we will be talking about.

As I said, I opened up naming some of the huge cost increases in health care, but Dr. Gingrey will lay out the general plan of where we need to go to make some substantive reforms in the health care system so that we are no longer talking about cost shifting, but really talking about saving money, and, more importantly, saving lives.

I yield to Dr. Gingrey.

I would like to talk a little bit, if I may, about some of these issues about errors in hospitals.

I opened up by saying we clearly have the best health care available in America, but I would like the Speaker and others to imagine this: when you go into a hospital or doctor's office, generally you will see filing cabinets packed with paper records of a patient's care. Now, imagine also if the patient has seen multiple doctors, there are multiple files, and probably stacked somewhere on top of those filing cabinets are reports waiting to be filed, and chances are pretty good that the records between doctors offices are disconnected, that is, one doctor may not know what the other physicians or treatment specialists have seen. Perhaps the patient has not gone for the lab tests or consultations they have been asked to do. Perhaps they have, and those records have not been returned, x-rays have not come back over, whatever that is.

But you have a situation of voluminous paper records, oftentimes scattered within a hospital in different departments or between different offices, and that results in the likelihood that important medical records could be lost or not retrieved at that moment when someone needs to be making decisions.

Having worked in both neonatal intensive care units, pediatric units, and my own private practice as a psychologist, it was often critically important to be able to access records and review them quickly. But a simple statement one was looking for in a file that was multiple volumes and oftentimes multiple inches thick, it could take hours to retrieve critically important data.

The risk of that is that some information may be missing. The risk is that important information may be missed. One study even found that one in seven medical records was missing vital information, and this could then lead to redundant tests or misdiagnoses, redundant treatments or inappropriate treatments.

Health administration paperwork costs almost $300 billion annually, equal to about $1,000 per person in America, or actually 31 percent of all health care expenditures in the United States; and yet we have hospitals with 21st-century technology that can use a 64-cut CT scanner that can give us three dimensional films of patients' hearts, but we are still using an 18th-century paper system to keep track of these things.

The RAND Corporation reported that these critical errors that come from redundant, unnecessary, and missed information adds $162 billion in health care costs per year, a huge avoidable expense. Part of our move as the Republican conference here is to make sure that we encourage and fund through incentives hospitals and doctors' offices to move towards health information technology.

Medication errors alone cost Medicare about $29 billion in costs. Whenever we talk about cost savings in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, it is not slashing care, it is improving care; it is not denying access to care, it is bringing access to care. And that is vitally important.

Anyone who has ever had a prescription that could not be read or the pharmacist had to call back or the patient wasn't sure if it was duplicating another medication recognizes how these errors cost the system. The best, the best doctors and the best hospitals and the best specialists have their eyes blindfolded when it comes to trying to deal with these.

In the Deficit Reduction Act, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, $150 million was put in there for hospitals to use grants in high Medicaid populations, but throughout the Nation we see many health information technology companies emerging at hospitals and insurance companies investing billions of dollars, a critically important issue.

So next time when one goes to the doctor's office and sees the papers gone, but to see, for example, in VA hospitals now the doctor putting records on a computer, calling up x-rays on a computer, looking at CT scans and MRIs, and, yes, even watching films of surgery on their computer screen, recognize that this is part of where we need to go with 21st-century medical technology.

But also know this: the physician who did the test or radiologist who did the x-ray can immediately send it over secure and confidentially to one's physician, who can then review the record.

In fact, I have been in physicians' offices, since, unfortunately, a few months ago I had an accident in Iraq and then had a CT scan in Baghdad and an MRI done in Germany, and found that what could happen here is the records could then be spent over on computer disk to physicians in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda who could then review those and easily consult, without having to call for new tests and repeat those. It wasn't just the wording that they had of what was taking place in the medical test. They could actually see it themselves.

Repeat this story millions of times a day across America, and you can see why the RAND Corporation says we could have savings of $160 billion; and in addition to that, when you look at the savings that comes from otherwise lost days in the workplace, another $150 billion in savings.

Let me mention one other area that we can track with electronic medical records, and that is infection rates. A bill that I am working on to actually give incentives to hospitals and medical practices to reduce infections is critically important.

Health care-acquired infections cost the United States about $50 billion in annual medical costs. Now, these infections are such things as staphylococcus, methacycline-resistant staphylococcus aureous, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, et cetera, where what happens is through such low-tech issues as hand-washing or cleaning equipment, because we take these things for granted so much, they are not done. Sadly, this leads to somewhere up above 75,000, some estimates

even as high as 90,000, deaths per year, so says the Center For Disease Control, and these, in many cases are preventible. Now, in some cases they are not, if someone comes in with an open wound or someone is taking immunosuppressant drugs.

But what we need to do here is actually help patients get better care. We can save massive amounts if we use Medicare and Medicaid to provide incentives and pay for performance for hospitals that reduce these.

But this is where, again, using electronic medical records helps, by having this information available that hospitals can review and pull up information and saying what is happening? Are we seeing trends within the hospital? Should we take action? Information that can come up as an immediate alert to the hospital medical staff, to medical directors and hospital personnel, hospital administrators, to say infections are now detected within the hospital, we need to take affirmative, aggressive, and thorough action to isolate and deal with this. That being the case, we can save tens of thousands of lives a year and tens of billions of dollars.

Now, we point these out because it is so critically important. I hear time and time again people misleading the American public that somehow we are trying to cut Medicare and Medicaid. That is not true.

What we are trying to do is improve the system. And any American family knows that whether it is your car or your house, that when you deal with using inefficient and cheap ineffective ways, you can end up paying much more because the tools you use may break or the system you are trying to use to fix the problem may actually be ineffective, and it is going to cost you more in the long run.

Doing poor health care, making wrong decisions in health care, is what is expensive. Making the right decisions in health care and making sure we have the highest quality is what lowers costs. And once and for all, we have to put these tools back into the hands of health care providers across the Nation, give them the information that is needed on every patient, every time, making sure those records are secure and so that physicians are competent and hospital personnel are competent.

Dr. David Brailer, the President's appointee to take many of these actions in the area of health information technology, and Secretary Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, are leading the charge in some of these advances along with us in Congress.

This is something that we want the American people to know, Mr. Speaker; that in so doing, we will actually be saving tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars. These are efforts we will not yield on, because we recognize that the number of deaths that occur per year from us having our eyes blindfolded and our hands and not being able to do the best in health care is actually more that occur in a single year than died in all of the Vietnam War.

We have the tools to do this, and we as a Republican Conference will continue to lead this Nation in moving forward to save lives and save money.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey, to control the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the rapidly rising cost of health care has put quality coverage out of the reach of millions of families. Too many cannot afford to see their doctor. Too many put off early treatment. Too many are overwhelmed by hospital bills. Too many meet a wall of bureaucracy that stands between them and their doctor. This system costs too many lives and too many dollars.

Each side of the aisle has offered solutions: national health care on one side of the aisle, health savings accounts on the other. But these two plans deal with payments. Neither solves the problem of costly errors and inefficiency. Cost shifting is not cost savings. They only focus on who is paying, when we need to reform what we are paying for.

Electronic medical records, electronic prescribing, eliminating hospital-borne infections, accurate dates on prescription drugs, expanding patients' care management, ending defensive medicine and allowing doctors to volunteer at community health centers are among the reforms our Nation needs.

Any of us would reach out to save the life of one person. We must reform the

health care system to save ten of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars. Members can see more information on this at www.murphy.house.gov.

The super Steelers, Mr. Speaker, are super again. And as Myron Cope would say, yoi and double yoi. For Sunday night, the Steelers won Super Bowl XL, otherwise in town we call it Super Bowl extra large, over the Seattle Seahawks by a score of 21-10.

This monumental win was the fifth National Football League championship for the Steelers franchise, tied now for the most in pro football history. And as we say in the `Burgh, this win signified one for the thumb as it provided Pittsburgh with a fifth championship ring for their last finger on the city's collective hand.

The amazing Steelers finished their season by winning their final eight games, including the Super Bowl. And when the Steelers had a 7-5 record during the regular season, it looked like they might miss the playoffs completely unless they won each of their final four regular season games. But this team, like this city, does not give up. And the fans of the Steeler nation never give up on them. So the Steelers won their final four games. Then after clinching the sixth and final AFC playoff seed, the Steelers became the first team to win three road playoff games and then the Super Bowl.

And they were confronted with the toughest possible road to get there. The Steelers had to beat the top three teams in the AFC, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos, each on their respective home fields.

No other team ever did this. No sixth-seeded playoff team ever made it to the Super Bowl. But then again, no other team is the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In the Super Bowl the Steelers faced the mighty Seattle Seahawks who possessed the highest scoring offense in the league, the NFL Most Valuable Player, running back Shaun Alexander. The Steelers' dominant defense, however, led by Troy Polamalu and Joey Porter limited the prolific Seahawks to just 10 points.

The Steelers offense was led by Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward who is here on the cover of the Tribune Review.

Mr. Speaker, you might be interested to know, as you probably already do, that Hines Ward is a graduate from the University of Georgia. He caught five passes for 123 yards and one touchdown which was thrown by wide receiver Antwaan Randle-El on a classic reverse pass.

Running back Willie Parker scored a Super Bowl record 75-yard run. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger started the scoring with the second- quarter touchdown, was also known as having that play called the ``tackle against the Colts,'' which kept the Steelers' dream alive.

This was a remarkable fifth Super Bowl victory for a team that personifies grit, tenacity, and excellence with the city of Pittsburgh and members of the Steeler nation from around the world. It was a particularly great accomplishment for a team that was originally purchased by founder Art Rooney in 1933 for $2,500. At that time the Steelers were one of 10 charter members of the National Football League.

Today, the Steelers are operated by team owner Dan Rooney, his son and team president Art Rooney II, all from the offspring of Art Rooney.

Congratulations also go to head coach Bill Cowher who finally made it to the top of the mountain, as Dan Rooney says, for this win of the Vince Lombardi Trophy to bring it back to his hometown of Pittsburgh.

I know every coach from defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt, to the training staff and every front office staff member is reveling in this win, as they should.

Congratulations to running back and fan favorite Jerome Bettis. The Bus, the fifth leading rusher in NFL history, went out on top in story- book fashion, winning his first Super Bowl in his hometown of Detroit in the final game of his 13-year career. The Steelers kept their promise to him and brought him back to his hometown.

And finally, congratulations to the millions of Steelers fans from throughout the world that make up the Steeler nation. They were there, we were there at every home game and every away game, every household waving our terrible towels here. When I was over in Iraq and I was over in Afghanistan, there they were with their Myron Cope official terrible towels as well. They were there 250,000 strong at a parade Monday in Pittsburgh to welcome the team back. The fans were there over the years, thick and thin, like the Steelers, believing in the best, always strong, never satisfied with just being there. And now, as Dan Rooney has said, now that we have one for the thumb and the ring let us start on the next hand. Congratulations to the super Steelers, and let us make it another one for the next hand next year.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me, allowing me to wrap up here.

As we congratulate this new generation of Steelers who we are excited about, it is a good time to also remember those who got us so many memories in the past: Terry Bradshaw; Lynn Swann; Joe Greene; Franco Harris; Blount; Lambert; Wagner; and, of course, the great coach Chuck Noll. They built a team, along with the Rooneys, in which the dynasty was set. And it is an exciting time for Pittsburgh to celebrate, Pittsburghers and everywhere around the world in the Steelers Nation to celebrate the new generation of Steelers. As a Congress we take our hats off to all of the NFL players who work so hard and maintain that tenacity and dignity on and off the field and show what America is about.

As I talked to soldiers overseas and saw Steelers banners hanging there as well as many other NFL banners, it was always fascinating for me to see how people from overseas still clung to the hopes that their hometown teams gave them. Indeed, it is a message that goes to people all throughout the world for the Steelers Nation of what it means to be a team that was counted down and out but ended up on top. It is something of a lesson we can all remember as Americans of what this great team, the Super Steelers, have taught us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I am pleased to join my colleagues in support of this resolution to recognize the students, teachers, faculty, and graduates of Catholic schools. At Catholic schools across my State of Pennsylvania and the Nation, students will receive the highest-quality teaching in all academic subjects. But perhaps more important, beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, students will be exposed to well- rounded, values-based curricula that teach the mind, the heart, the body, and the soul. Indeed, Catholic schools don't shy a away from matters of right and wrong.

The late Pope John Paul II, himself a great advocate for education, challenged Catholic schools to ``foster in your students a social consciousness which will move them to meet the needs of their neighbors and to discern and to seek to remove the sources of injustice in society.'' I believe Catholic schools do promote social awareness and help make the world a better place to live.

Last week, as we know, was Catholic Schools Week, and the theme was ``Catholic Schools: Character, Compassion, and Values.'' As a young student at St. Barnabas Elementary School myself and Walsh Jesuit High School, I was taught these traits at early ages. I greatly value my Catholic school education, as I do my public school education.

The 18th Congressional District of Pennsylvania has this diversity of many Catholic schools, 67 in Allegheny County alone, five in Washington County, 19 in Westmoreland County. With over 183,000 students educated in Catholic schools across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the impact is huge. Eighty percent of Catholic school students go on to college, and Catholic schools saved more than $1 billion last year in taxpayer funds in Pennsylvania alone by a reduction of the dropout rate to less than 3 percent.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this legislation. I commend the authors and all those who teach and are students of Catholic schools.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to solemnly support House Concurrent Resolution 331 that mourns the loss of so many coal miners from the Sago and Alma mine disasters and, quite frankly, it is a time for us to remember so many other coal mining disasters. The victims as well as the rescue crews who fought bravely to get them to safety ought to be recognized in the aftermath of this tragedy. But now our deepest sympathies are with the families and friends whose lives have passed.

I feel a special affinity to these miners, my own great-grandfather having been a coal miner in Pennsylvania, and while I was a student at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, I spent so much time working in towns and volunteer work in mining towns in West Virginia, among them being Mann, West Virginia where the great Buffalo Creek flood disaster hit when a dam from a coal mine collapsed and wiped out so many people in that town.

It is a rough life for coal miners and coal mining towns, for the families, the wives and loved ones who sit and wait each time the elevator goes down into the shaft. The struggles and the hard scrabble life is so often immortalized in songs and folk songs over the years. And they are true, indeed, for the life is difficult for men and women who work in the mines and recognize the dangers and the constant safety that the mine operators must attend to.

It is also time to recognize that there are teams of people out there who did so much and responded so quickly, in particular Consol Energy, which had all five of their West Virginia teams and three Pennsylvania teams first on the site to try and help. We wished and we prayed so much that this would not have ended as it did. Instead, we had hoped that perhaps it would have been what happened at Cue Creek mine disaster of a couple of years ago in Pennsylvania when we all waited and watched with our eyes glued to our televisions as nine miners emerged from the mine late at night.

We wished for that. We prayed for that. Sadly that did not happen. And sadly, there may be other disasters of this type, but we must work hard to set the goal that it never happens again. We know that coal is a vital part of American energy. We know that coal and all the things that come out of manufacturing related to coal are a vital part of our country's economy. And the men and women who continue to work in the mines down below or on the surface are all part of that dedication and their willingness through their courage to give so much every day.

And then finally, perhaps, what we have to make sure we do, as the gentlewoman from West Virginia was saying, is work very hard with rescue teams and strong safety regulations for mines and enforcement of those regulations to prevent these tragedies from happening again. It is only through such actions that we would fittingly remember those who have come before us and died, and those who may come in the future and be suffering as well. That is the very least we owe their families. And as we honor those who have lost, we need to work towards that safety for those miners and their families for the future.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives, I rise to honor the priceless life and courageous public service career of State Police Corporal Joseph R. Pokorny.

Fearless, responsible, tough, professional, elite, hero. These are some of the apt words that Joseph's friends and colleagues have used to describe him in recent days. Thousands have mourned the loss of Corporal Pokorny, who was senselessly killed in the line of duty during the early morning of December 12, 2005.

Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Joseph and his family moved to Center as a young boy. He graduated from Center Area High School in 1978 and attended Indiana University. Joseph later graduated from the Pennsylvania State Police Academy in Hershey in 1983, before embarking on a distinguished law enforcement career of 22 years.

In 2000, he was promoted to the rank of corporal--a monumental accomplishment on the elite Pennsylvania State Police force. Joseph always served with uncommon courage, a firm commitment to protecting the public, and a fervent passion for the American way of life.

Of all the recent tributes to Corporal Pokorny, perhaps the greatest compliment paid to him was that a close friend who grew up with Joseph said, ``he was a real Pittsburgh guy.''

During this holiday season, my thoughts and prayers have especially been with Corporal Pokorny's parents, Joseph Sr. and Florence, and his teenage son and daughter, Joseph, and Alexandra. They were the most important people in Joseph's life.

The world is a safer, better place because of Joseph Pokorny. My fellow citizens of southwestern Pennsylvania and I owe Corporal Pokorny a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. He will be deeply missed.