Date: 2005-07-26
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I must say the Republicans are on a roll here. Last week they voted in the Committee on Education and the Workforce to raise the cost of education to those students seeking a higher education by raising the cost of the loans that they will seek to finance that education. In this legislation what we see them doing is taking away vital health benefits that millions of Americans currently have but will lose if this legislation is passed. And later this week they are going to bring an energy to the bill to the floor of the Congress that The Wall Street Journal says will raise the price of gasoline. What is it that the middle class did to them to make them so angry at them? They raise the cost of their education. they take away their health care benefits. and now they are going to increase the price of gasoline. Do the Members know what the price of gasoline is in California? It is $2.67. $2.77. $2.87 a gallon. Do the. Members know how hard people have struggled in these States to have minimum health care benefits so that they can have a mammogram. so they can have diabetes testing. and now they are going to take that away. And now they raise the cost of college education. It just does not make any sense. The theory is that Congress should be trying to extend meaningful health care coverage to families and to making sure that they have benefits that. in fact. are there when they need them. But that is not what this legislation does. This legislation overrides all of the hard work that was done in 40 or 45 States to make sure that people would have access to well baby care. to make sure that they would have access to maternity benefits. to make sure that they would have access to mammograms. crucial services lhat families need. This legislation says not necessarily so. they do not get that. on the theory that we have heard argued here that some plan is better than no plan. But a plan without benefits is not worth much at all. And why would one keep paying premiums even if they are low premiums if they do not get the coverage that their family needs? The point is for the people running that plan. that can turn out to be very profitable. That is why they do not want the insurance commissioners involved. because at some point the insurance commissioners would do what they have done in the past. They would blow the whistle on people running plans where they take premiums from middleclass workers. but they do not give the benefit that they want. The record is replete with that. replete with that in State after State after State. But that is stripped out of this legislation. This legislation should be rejected because it just is not the benefits that people need. What we ought to be doing is extending that kind of universal access to plans that provide people the benefits. The Congressional Budget Office in its most recent report. April of this year. analyzed the legislation two other times and concluded that 81 million workers would end up in AHPs under this bill. and over 90 percent of them would come from existing health care plans where in all likelihood their benefits are better. The CBO looked at it once. it looked at it twice. it looked at it three times. and it said that is their conclusion. This means that millions of Americans. working Americans today with health insurance. under this plan would get stripped of the health care coverage that they now have and that they need. that they need. They are talking about trying to cover a couple hundred thousand people. That is their argument. but they are going to strip the health care benefits away from almost 8 million people that have this kind of coverage. It is unacceptable. We ought to reject this. Later this week we ought to reject the energy bill. and maybe we can do something to keep people in decent health care plans. lower their energy costs. and. when the higher ed bill comes. reject that. and we can save them some money on a college education.