Date: 1994-07-27
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman from West Virginia and also the gentlewoman from Connecticut for those words. I have been active in the health care debate. Coming from Houston. TX. because of serving on the Education and Labor Committee. but also the district I represent has 148.000 families who are working. who are working at those jobs and their employers do not provide it. one of the highest in the country. These are people who are out working. and they are not on welfare. But they are working and yet they do not have it. I rise this afternoon along with my colleagues to bring attention to the issue of universal coverage as the essential component of any health care reform that we do. Universal coverage is the key to lowering the cost and eliminating the cost shifting that has caused the skyrocketing of health care insurance premiums. The people of the district that I am honored to represent are some of the hardest working people in this country. Yet that alarming 148.000 of working Houstonians and working Texans are from working families without health care coverage. This is from the census data that we received from 1990. This is a prime example of what is wrong with our current system. These people work and yet have no coverage. We provide them with.a system where it would be easier to stop working and qualify for Medicaid. Yet these people continue to work because they know that their work is" the way to have a better future for their families. We should reward their work with health care and not punish them for working by saying. you should go on Medicaid. an additional cost to both States and the Federal Government. In a recent survey. 74 percent of Americans stated they support universal coverage. The AFLCIO. the AARP. the AMA. with a combined membership of 46 million Americans. all agree that universal coverage is an essential component of health care. Along with that 74 percent. almost threequarters of Americans support universal coverage. Since we have reached some reasonable consensus that whatever bill passes needs to have universal coverage as its goal. we must now look at the methods on.how we can reach that care and how we can reach that goal. First of all. we can do nothing. We can. Congress can adjourn in September or October and say. let us leave the current system as it is and see what we can do and let the system correct itself. Well. for many years. Presidents from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon have suggested national health care. The problems were apparent then. -and all of a sudden the market changed a little bit and then Congress went home and did not do anything. So the problems continued. because the only reason we have any health in the last year is because of the threat of additional government intervention. So we can do nothing. We would continue to see skyrocketing premium increases. People would still risk losing their coverage. And our- national debt would continue to grow under the strain of increased health care spending. We could enact a governmentsponsored plan. whether it be called a single payer or any other government plan that would be provided. And the Federal Government. like in some of the countries that my colleagues have talked about. would provide that insurance. I have received so many calls. like a lot of us in Congress from our districts. saying. "we know the system is broke. but we do not want the Government to provide it. We dont know if the Government can do anything right. So we do not want to trust it to the Government." So we are not even advocating a single payer system. although there will be a vote in the next few weeks on that here in the House. because we do not want that Government intervention because people do not necessarily trust the Federal Government. The proposal has some distinct advantages though. It would cover universal care. It would take care of everyone universally. But we also know the distrust that people have. So let us discount the second mechanism for doing it. We can require an individual mandate. That is one of the proposals that was considered in the Education and Labor Committee. We could require everyone in the United States to provide their health care. Well. before I was elected to Congress in 1992. I served 20 years in the Texas Legislature. and we tried to deal with automobile insurance with an. individual mandate. Like most States in this country. including West Virginia. it is a mandate that you have automobile liability insurance. Today on the roads in Texas. we still have 30 percent of those people who are on the road who have no liability insurance because of the high cost. because of the availability. for lots of different reasons. So an individual mandate has not worked in automobile insurance even though we have criminal penalties in the State of Texas. And in some States. you could lose your automobile for not having liability insurance. But we still have a lot uninsured motorists. So the individual mandate that is being proposed and will be voted on in the next few weeks here just will not work because it has not worked in other areas of insurance. What we come back down to then is to continue the system we have today. the success that we have and to build on the success we have of the employer/ employee cost sharing that is fairness that we have now. Almost 9 out of 10 of the people who have insurance in the United States today. through the free market. get it through their employer. It is not with a mandate. That would require some fair sharing between employers and employees. Even Pizza Hut that was talked about a few minutes ago. they offer their employees now some type of health care. They just do not want it mandated. Well. I would like to see those minimum wage workers. those parttime workers. Whether it be at Pizza Hut or McDonalds or any other place. be able to have that health care. because 9 out of 10 of the people who have it now get it through their employers. This keeps the free enterprise system that we have. the benefits of it. We have some of the highest quality health care in the world here in. the United States. We have people come from all over the -world to our health care centers. And particularly in Houston. TX. people come from all over Latin America to Houston for health care. They can pay for it though. and they come. And they pay very top dollar to come to the University of Texas. M.D..Anderson._ or to many.of Our hospitals and our medical centers. What we need to do is build on our current system and expand that for the people I represent. that 148.000 families who work and do not have it. to be able to access that high quality care that we can offer in Houston and all over across the country. It opens up our quality health care system we have now to those hard working Americans that need it. Today most people who have their insurance get their insurance through their employer. including Members of Congress and the President. If we want to make sure that the system we provide also includes Members of Congress and the President. we need to have some type of employer/employee fair share. We have a 70/30 system now in Congress. I will be honest with you. before I was elected to Congress and was in a business. we had a union contract that required our employer to pay 100 percent. So I may be one of the Members of Congress who had better health ckre before I was elected to Congress. But we had 100 percent coverage for dependents. And we have a lot of quality care in the United States today. but this builds on even the system that Congress has and the President has. It is cost sharing system. This system for all Americans was created by the market forces. by free. enterprise. No one is mandated that requirement but it was created. What we need to do is expand it to those other few people who have not been the beneficiaries of our quality system we have now. It is very attractive to the best. workers. We want to make sure that it is attractive to all the workers. By creating a system that is an extension of the marketcreated system we have now. we are retaining the best of our current system. the fairness. Let us make this work for all the health care system for every one in America. In closing. I would like to remind my colleagues who may be watching and also the American people that this is the last great peopleoriented debate we may have for this century. The social policy we talked about. Social Security In the thirties and Medicare in the sixties. now we are going to talk about health care for everyone in the ninetieshopefully by the time we leave here. we will -have it on the Presidents deskthat will cover all Americans. When we talk to our children and our grandchildren. 30. 50 years from now. maybe they will look back on it just like we today look back on the sixties and say how did Congress have such a hard time passing Medicare for our senior citizens. or passing a basic pension system in the thirties for our senior citizens. We cannot imagine 50 years later not having that. or 30 years later not having it. I think that 30 to 50 years from now we may be in the same situation. My children and my grandchildren will be saying. "I cant believe that it took Congress so long to do something." We need to make sure that Congress leaves with success. that we do not simply make history. that we make history on health care fairness. not just a big political squabble we have here. and we leave Congress in October with some success. and not just with a lot of hot air here. .Other industrialized nations of the world. as my colleagues have pointed -out. have taken this step because it is the right thing to do economically and politically. There is a great future for all Americans. If we vote for health care reform that covers everyone. if we pass a plan that contains universal coverage. it will be a better life for all Americans.