will be in order the chair lazy for the house the communication from the speaker the speakers rooms washington d c september twenty fourth two thousand and seven i hereby appoint the honorable mazie k who wrote no to active speaker pro tempore on this day signed nancy pelosi speaker of the house of representatives pursuant to the order of the house of january fourth two thousand and seven the chair will now recognize members from this submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to thirty minutes and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to five minutes the chair september twenty fourth hurricane rita smashed into louisiana and texas making landfall first in my district a johnson by you in cameron parish a small town in southwest louisiana the storm was one of the worst ever into the gulf of mexico causing eleven billion dollars in damage to the area hard working individuals at the community level have had the greatest impact on our recovery and reconstruction that's despite fits and starts with government help and so is the individuals local officials families on the ground that made the difference the storm also caused on president a damage to the oil and gas industry and again individuals working in those companies got our oil and gas infrastructure back up and running in record time so that we could fuel america's energy needs at the federal level funds have been appropriated for assistance but they've been clearly slow to arrive because of bureaucracy and this is been an ongoing battle that we in congress have had to fight with and local officials have had to fight with as well but i want to say two weeks ago i was down there at johnson by that little town where they struggle to get their school back and actually private funding allowed the school to come back before we could even get cut off funds down there because of the bureaucracy that took two years but the but private funds allowed for the school to be rebuilt and it's one of the first schools to be rebuilt back in louisiana and i was down there two weeks ago for a very special time and we had a ribbon cutting for a new health clinic in johnson by you down in cameron parish this has this little town did not have a health care clinic it never had one and in fact families had to drive many many miles on small roads or oftentimes had to rely on a ferry to cross a body of water to receive health care and if that ferry was down they were stranded but with the opening of this health clinic for the first time families and johnson by you now have access to health care and this was very sick because a family donated the land for the clinic a company actually put up money two million dollars to build the clinic and an additional million dollars to fund its ongoing operations for the for the next three years so for the first time we've now seen is a health care clinic in johnson by you where the the community came together to put this in place to create access for health care you know we all talk about how all politics is local but i would submit that all healthcare is local and if we don't have access to health care it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what's available in boston massachusetts or in san francisco in new york for the folks down in johnson by you don't have access to health care then what good is it what good is a great advance in boston or the wonderful hospitals around the country if folks can't even enter into the health care system in their own community access is critically important and there are many many things many factors that affect access and i know this firsthand as a cardiovascular surgeon before coming to congress that many rural communities don't have access because there aren't doctors in these rural communities where there are not clinics in these rural communities we have severe shortages of physicians nation nationwide right now and there are many reasons why we have shortages of asked for g a o study in the past on this and tried to pass an amendment in the higher ed bill last year to look at why we have these shortages clearly there are a number of factors and we need to correct those those deficiencies to get a sufficient physician workforce to fill our rural communities  provide access their cost issues that limit access cost to families where they can't afford health insurance this cost actually reimbursement factors for physicians which do not a provide adequate incentives for physicians and nurses to be in rural communities we have a severe shortage of nurses all health care is local and we have to remember that if we're going to reform the health care system you know the united states has one of the best healthcare systems in the world and we say we spend significantly more on health care than any other nation health care cost of doubled between one thousand nine hundred three and two thousand and four growing to nearly two trillion dollars annually in addition to this malpractise premiums have continued to skyrocket physicians premiums rose fifteen percent between two thousand and two thousand and two as much as thirty three percent for some specialties many of many physicians are basically retiring early from their practices because of the s cost imposed by malpractise premiums so my democratic colleagues and other and some of the presidential hopefuls have been lately advocating a government run universal health care program saying that this is the only way we can have universal coverage but i'll tell you this and i know this is a position that universal coverage does not equate to access coverage is one thing but if you don't have the facilities you don't have the physicians you don't have the nurses you don't have the clinic or you can't afford insurance or you can't find access it doesn't matter about the coverage it's access that's important now one of the things that congress is looking at is the s chip bill and one of the things that s chip fails to recognize is that the measure fails to take into account that children's health separated from the parents health coverage is not going to be good enough again it's access typically the mother in a given family will get will basically make health care decisions and if the child has access to the mother doesn't then we won't see him he's wrapped up like you i think we have to have three principles that chair declares the house in recess until two p m today