Date: 2003-06-19
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Madam Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his leadership on this issue in our committee. Once again. as with pension legislation. unemployment assistance. tax policy. and many other examples. the Republican majority of this House is bringing forward a bill that they claim is in the interest of working families. But once again this is headfakes and sleight of hand. This bill hurts working people. places their alreadymeager health insurance coverage at risk. and serves only the interest of the business lobbyists. I want to add that once again. as with those earlier bills. the Republican majority continues to deprive 206 Members of the House on the Democratic side and the tens of millions of people we represent from being able to conduct a serious debate on this issue. Once again. a contentious bill comes to the floor with no amendments allowed. just a substitute. So there is little time to debate the bill that will cost millions of Americans. including millions of children and women workers. their health coverage. with no ability to offer amendments to improve this bill. These tyrannical and corrupt rules under which we are operating under the Republican leadership in this House prevent us from having that debate and prevent the Republicans from taking votes on amendments we would like to offer.Let us be clear: this is not a question of whether or not we have time to devote to debate. Week in and week out the Congress comes in on Tuesday or late Monday night and leaves on Thursday or early Friday morning. The Congress has time to adjourn for fundraisers. the Congress has time to adjourn for golf tournaments. the Congress has time to adjourn for the White House picnic. but apparently we do not have time to be able to offer amendments to legislation. so that we can have an honest debate about the legislation before us or have opportunities to improve it or to offer an alternative view on how that should be carried out. So what do we find out now? We do not have that opportunity here when we are risking 8 million peoples health care coverage. according to the Congressional Budget Office. So we will pass today. with almost entirely Republican votes. a bill that deprives 47 percent of the people in this country a role in debating and improving this legislation. The heart of this illconceived bill is a provision that overrides State laws requiring access to basic health care services. These State laws say to people that when they have a health insurance plan. that plan will mean something. It means that they will have access to mammograms. that means that they will have access to emergency services. that means that they will have maternity benefits and wellbaby care and diabetes treatment. and it means there will be some mental health coverage and cancer screening. Because those are the things that the American families need in a health care plan. Now. why are those the rules today in States across this country? Why did the States make this determination? Not to burden small businesses. not to burden health care plans. but because what people were being offered prior to that were essentially phantom plans. They were phantom plans that had lititle or no benefits to individuals. that did not meet the needs that families had. They had little or no benefits in terins of what women needed in their health care policies. That is the reason for these regulations. .or these requirements. that health care insurance plans provide in their health care. That is the purpose of the plans. But that was not what was happening. So now what we see is that this comes along. and it says we are going to override the judgment of these States. we are going to overrides the judgment of the legislators. the collective wisdom of the Governors and legislatures. the attorneys general. the insurance commissioners and others to make sure that people have adequate health insurance. And the consequences are that we are stripping much of this treatment away from the individuals in terms of preventive services for men. women and children. We know that these services and treatments save money. we know they preserve health in the long run. and we know that these services were rarely provided voluntarily by employers in the past. That is precisely why so many States have moved to guarantee this coverage. The proponents of this legislation constantly warit to say. well. this was good for labor unions and this was good for big industry. Yes. and in those instances the employees are organized and they negotiate on an equal level. That is not the situation with these plans. These people are given a health care plan which they can take or leave. And the purpose here is to reduce the cost of those plans. The fact of the matter is CBO has reported that approximately 8.5 million workers would end up in AHPs. and over 95 percent would simply be dumped into those from existing health care plans. That means that 8 million workers would be stripped of their current legal right to critical treatments and preventive health care services. Eight million people would end up with less health care the next morning than they currently have under this provision. I recognize that that means that new people will be given health insurance that do not have it. but we have to weigh the question of the people who will get this strippeddown policy as their health insurance to those people who have relatively decent policies who will lose their access to those policies. Because that is really what this is about. It is about cutting the cost to businesses. not about providing health insurance that families truly need. That is why. again. these plans were protected in the States and were regulated in the States. and that is why so many of the Governors. both Republican and Democrat. oppose this legislation. That also means that these people are not going to have the kind of peace of mind that so many of them now have with respect to their insurance policies. We also know that one of the reasons this bill is offered is that health insurance costs are increasing. They are increasing about 20. 25 percent for small employers. What that suggests is that. as people move into these plans. the individuals with higher risk will be left out. Those people who stayed in those kinds of insured pools. those costs will continue to go up. and it means that we will have uneven health insurance for people in this country. Madam Speaker. this is a very bad bill. It is a bad bill. It really is about false advertising. It is suggesting that somehow this is going to extend to millions of people health insurance that will cover their families. That is not what it is going to do. It would if we were not overriding State law. but here the majority has decided that the collective wisdom of the States and the protection of residents and consumers in those States. that is going to be overridden and individuals be under no requirements to offer those components as part of this health insurance plan. I would hope that the House would reject this plan when it comes time to vote on the legislation.