Date: 2005-05-03
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise tonight to talk about one of the most pressing problems facing the health care system in our country. the growing number of uninsured. Every year since 2000. an additional million Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently reported that the number of indiViduals without any health insurance in our country rose to 45 million this year. This is a problem that we literally cannot afford not to address. In my hometown of Houston. we are proud to have the worldfamed. worldclass Texas Medical Center. Some of the most innovative and lifesaving research and treatment developments are being discovered in our own backyard. The problem is that too many of our neighbors cannot access these livesaving treatments because they lack health insurance. My State of Texas ranks number one in uninsured adults. with 31 percent of adult Texans living without health insurance. The statistics for the Houston area are just as troubling with more than 31 percent of our Harris County residents living without health insurance. When a third of the State and countys population is without health insurance. I think it is safe to say this problem has reached crisis proportions. The increase in the number of uninsured is due. in part. to the changing nature of health care in our country. Gone are the days when we could count on our employers to provide comprehensive health insurance for us and our families. With health insurance costs reaching $10.000 per year. lowwage workers cannot fend for themselves. With fulltime minimumwage workers bringing home roughly that much each year. they cannot spend the bulk of their earnings on health insurance. and many small businesses are finding that they simply cannot afford to purchase health insurance for their employees. As a sideline. not only small businesses. but some of our larger businesses. whether it be General Motors or Shell Oil. talk about the disparities and how much they pay in industrialized countries like Europe and Japan for health insurance. and Canada. as compared to how much more they pay in our country. It is no little surprise that today 80 percent of the uninsured in this country are gainfully employed. Unfortunately. my State of Texas also ranks number one in the percentage of uninsured working adults. with 27 percent of working Texans currently without health insurance. E 2045 This is a problem for all Americans as the uninsured often use emergency rooms as their primary source of medical care. In fact. a study of emergency room use in Harris County found that 57 percent of the diagnoses made in safety net hospital emergency rooms could have been treated in a physicians office or clinic. This increases health care costs for all Americans. The uninsured are less likely to seek preventive health care and only get care once their problems reach emergency proportions. In fact. nearly 50 percent of uninsured adults have postponed seekingohealth care because they cannot afford it. Only 15 percent of those individuals with healthinsurance have postponed care for this reason. It is no surprise. that the uninsured and underinsured are generally more expensive to treat because they fall through the cracks in our health care system. Unfortunately. the policies that this Congress has supported only serve to widen those cracks. Despite being faced with record levels of uninsured individuals. this Congress has put Medicaid cuts at the top of the budget agenda. Medicaid is the health insurer of last resort in this country. and subjecting this critical program to budget cuts will only serve to further increase the number of Americans without health insurance. Where does Congress think these folks will go once they are dropped from the Medicaid rolls? The answer is simple: They will join the ranks of the uninsured. and in doing so. they will be three times more likely to postpone health care. three times more likely to forego filling a prescription. and three times as likely to be hounded by collection agents for payments on medical care they do seek out. This is not the way to ensure that our citizens are healthy. productive members of our society. The Federal Governmeiit needs to renew its commitment to the most vulnerable members of our society. Faced with record levels of uninsured. we should be adding people to the Medicaid and SCHIP rolls. not dropping them. We should expand the SCHIP program to include parents of these CHIP children. That policy option alone would provide health insurance to 67 percent of CHIP parents in Texas. We should restore -funding for the HCAP program. which in my community. has helped enroll an additional 250.000 individuals in Medicaid and CHIP. while also directing the uninsured away from ERs and toward an appropriate health care home. These are programs that work. What does not work is picking a budget number out of thin air and forcing Members to chop away at a program until it fits that number. It is shameful that Congress is balancing the budget on the backs of lowincome families. If we are going to get this countrys health care system out of the ditch. we must stop digging that ditch.