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[Congressional Bills 103th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 79 Introduced in House (IH)]

103d CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. CON. RES. 79

   Expressing the sense of the Congress that any Federal health care 
             legislation should not include price controls.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             April 2, 1993

  Mr. Armey submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was 
referred jointly to the Committees on Energy and Commerce and Ways and 
                                 Means

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

 
   Expressing the sense of the Congress that any Federal health care 
             legislation should not include price controls.

Whereas 40 centuries of human experience teach the futility of price controls;
Whereas such controls fail because they do not address the true causes of 
        inflation, and amount to treating the symptoms rather than the disease;
Whereas the disease of inflation is almost always caused by government 
        intervention in the marketplace, and can therefore only be cured by 
        less, not more, intervention;
Whereas price controls harm consumers by discouraging producers from freely 
        offering their goods and services;
Whereas the resulting scarcity and diminished quality of goods tends to inspire 
        evasion, black markets, and disrespect for law among previously honest 
        citizens;
Whereas these evasions, in turn, inspire bureaucratic expansions and ever more 
        minute and officious regulation to enforce the controls;
Whereas ``voluntary'' controls tend to become mandatory, and ``temporary'' ones, 
        to become permanent;
Whereas by bottling up demand, such controls, once lifted, invariably cause 
        prices to shoot up for a time, perversely defeating their purpose;
Whereas our predecessors of the Continental Congress, having learned these many 
        lessons through painful experience, furnished a worthy precedent for all 
        time when, on June 4, 1778, they resolved to urge the repeal of all 
        State price controls and, having secured this repeal, materially 
        advanced the cause of American independence;
Whereas today's medical price inflation is primarily a result of massive 
        stimulation of demand by the United States Government and can therefore 
        only be brought down by ending that stimulation;
Whereas allowing market forces to operate freely in health insurance will be the 
        most effectual way to hold down medical prices; and
Whereas medical price controls, far from benefiting the American people, would 
        produce all of the aforementioned melancholy results, cause much 
        needless human suffering, and in the end, degrade the finest health care 
        system the world has ever known: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), 
That it is the sense of the Congress that any legislation enacted to 
reform the health care system of the United States should not include 
price controls.

                                 <all>
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