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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I just went over to our colleague from Kansas and told him that I would much rather be on the floor this afternoon working in a bipartisan way on something like this, and I hope that can be part of Senate proceedings in the future.

Here is what I think is important for the public to know about this proposal. It is that in the real world, the Marshall proposal is a prescription for less flexibility and more redtape in American healthcare. I want to be very specific.

Every Member of this body understands that America has a serious shortage of nurses and healthcare providers. Every single time we go home--I am sure this is the case for our colleague from Kansas, who is a physician. He hears from physicians and providers. Every time we are home, we hear from healthcare providers. I see the Presiding Officer of the Senate has been a very strong advocate for healthcare improvement for patients and providers. Every time we are home, we hear about the need for more healthcare providers.

Right now, there are requirements in Medicare for a lengthy process that must be completed before it is possible to hire healthcare providers to serve Medicare patients. If the Marshall proposal goes into effect as written, Health and Human Services could not waive this complicated process to take care of patients. So that would leave our country short of healthcare providers when there is an acute, even more serious need for them.

I am just going to close with this because we are all hoping to be home over the next week or so. When I am home, I always do these open- to-all townhall meetings. I go to every one of my counties every year. I have had more than 1,020 of them--open to all, ask whatever you want. I have never had a constituent at home, an Oregonian, say: Ron, what we need is more complicated processes and redtape in American healthcare. Usually, they are talking to us about waiving things.

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