Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLEMING. I thank the gentleman, my colleague and good friend, Dr. Roe from the great State of Tennessee. I have visited there many times, the Smoky Mountains. Also, speaking of smoky, everything there is smoked, and it smells so delicious you want to eat bark off trees when you go through Tennessee. So it's a lovely State, and I always enjoy visiting it.

Like you, I grew up in a very middle class, working middle class environment. I had to work my way through college. My mother became disabled when I was five, and then my father died just as I graduated from high school. I suddenly had the burden of helping out with the family, but also working my way through college and then ultimately medical school, which, with the help of the U.S. Navy, I was able to do that. I served 6 honorable years--some of the best years of my life, and my wife--in the Navy practicing medicine in such duty stations as Guam; Charleston, South Carolina; Oceanside, California; Camp Pendleton Marine Base.

It was, indeed, an honor to serve my country in that capacity as a physician. And then of course I've been in private practice since 1982, family medicine. I still see patients, I still provide care. I'm still dealing even day-to-day with some of the issues that all of us as physicians deal with.

Like you, in your many years of practice, I have carried a burden about what a wonderful contrast we have here. We have tremendous quality of care and delivery of care and the best of care and the best of technology, but yet some people do have access problems. There is no question about it; that needs to be solved.

I ran on a reform campaign, health care reform. I wanted reform, I came here to reform, but you know what I found when I got here is really anything but reform. What I'm seeing is a Congress that has taken a sudden left turn towards socialism to dismantle what is the best health care system in the world and remake it into the same image as Cuba, North Korea, Soviet Union, the U.K., Canada. Even some of the States like your own, Tennessee, who have experimented with socialized medicine and government takeover of medicine, have failed. I have actually asked, I have been to venues and asked, please, show me one example where government-run health care has ever been successful, and I have yet to find one single example of that.

So, like you, I am very interested in health care reform that is true reform, that is common sense, that makes the cost go down--bend the cost curve down, that's the common theme today. And there are so many ways that I'm sure we will get into as we go forward that we can do that. And I thank the gentleman for recognizing me.

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Mr. FLEMING. Well, I quite agree, with you, Dr. Roe.

I would like at this moment--and I think it would be a fitting time for this--to quote an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal, today's edition, where there's an editorial, probably the best editorial I've ever read.

For those of you who are watching tonight, I would strongly recommend that you read a copy of, again, today's Wall Street Journal editorial. I'm going to read just an excerpt. Here is what it says. Again, these are financial experts who are writing this. This is probably the widest read newspaper in the country, period, even more than USA Today, and they're certainly the most intelligent and best-trained financial people.

It says: Speaker Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she is prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass it.

This is obviously suggesting that there are a lot of people out there who don't like this, and she's bound and determined to have this as her legacy.

ObamaCare, as it says--I call it PelosiCare--and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a critical milestone, may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced. In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago.

That's quite true. Not one single Republican at any point has supported this bill, and many Democrats have not supported it.

With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle class entitlement that is designed to expand over time.

Again, I emphasize ``unrepealable.'' Once this thing gets into law, like so many things, there is no way we can get rid of it. It will be with us forever.

Taxes will need to rise precipitously. Even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands the government control of health care, eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

So I think that's very critical. First of all, it's one party--and one party only--that wants to force this. Really, it's even less than that. Just the leadership of one party wants to force this takeover of one-sixth of the American economy forever and wants to put it under government control forever, controlling your life from day to day. For what gain? Dr. Roe just pointed out that we could easily cover the same number of additional people with much less cost and with much less effort.

What it does is it leads to rationing. It leads to long lines. I think, certainly, what has been said about justice is true about health care: health care delayed is health care denied.

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Mr. FLEMING. One thing that I think can be said about this bill that's pretty obvious, and that is by virtue of a lot that you have said tonight, Dr. Roe, is that everyone will see costs go up. There is individual mandates, so even individuals who don't sign up for insurance will pay 2.5 percent taxes, which they don't have to pay. That's middle class, even lower socioeconomic class taxation.

There will be taxation on health savings accounts that does not exist today. Taxpayers will see their taxes increase. An employer will see their net tax go from 35 percent marginal rate today to 39 when the Bush tax cuts expire. Then another 5 percent above that, they will get to marginal rates of 45 percent, which most of those higher-income individuals in that range are small business owners, which means that they will have to reduce other benefits or reduce pay or reduce number of employees. That's all there flat is to it. There are only so many places you can cut.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Have you had any of your constituent businesspeople come to you and say, if this plan passes as they understand it, they are out? Their business is closed? I have.

Mr. FLEMING. I have. I have had a number of them say that. They have done the math. They cannot figure out where they are going to get the extra 5, 10, 15 percent. I mean, most businesses today operate on a margin of around 5 percent of gross income. Well, when you add overhead of another 15 percent, that means you are upside down by 10 percent. The bottom line is that everybody, not just the high-income people, everybody is going to be paying more in either taxes or premiums or both. Everybody is going to be getting less access to care. Yes, less access to care.

Again, just quickly going back to Canada, remember in Canada, care is free for everybody. It's universal, 100 percent. Well, only one out of six people have a family doctor in Canada. They actually have a lottery system. Yes, it's 100 percent universal. Unfortunately, you can't get in the system. They close hospitals down.

Even Cuba claims to have universal health care and medicine is free. The only problem is they've got no medicine. So what good is free when it isn't available? That is the direction that we are taking here if we go off this way.

Just to kind of summarize my comments on this, that is that every health care model in the world looks at two possibilities, two options to save money. One is to bring it down to the unit between the doctor and the patient and give them both a stake in what the total cost is, not necessarily pay completely out of pocket but at least pay a portion of it, and that's where health savings accounts make savvy consumers out of patients. Either that, in which they have a stake in controlling costs, or you have a giant bureaucracy such as in Canada and the UK, in which case you have to have long lines and rationing. It's one way or the other.

America, you are going to have to decide what you want. Today, we don't have the ideal thing. We need to improve the system we have. But if we go with the public option, which will lead to single payer, then we are going to go down the road of rationing and long lines. There is no doubt about that. And even Members of the other side of the aisle said that's where they want to be.

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