W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Maybe we're doing a bad job. I want to continue back with my friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield to my good friend from Georgia.

Mr. AKIN. Could I interrupt just for a moment and jump in there? I do have specifics on that very point that you've made. I don't know if you gentlemen were aware of it, but as of today, there are 19 States representing 41 percent of the population--and our State of Missouri is not here, but I know they have this on the burner to do. As of today, there are 19 States, representing 41 percent of the population, which have sued the Federal Government over ObamaCare, which has caused Justice Briar to make the statement: ObamaCare, a good candidate for review by the Supreme Court of the United States. So it's not just Tennessee. It's not just Missouri. It's not just Georgia. It's not just Pennsylvania. There are 19 States here that are saying something.

Mr. AKIN. Well, I'll tell you that I'm going to be talking to one in another hour or two not very far from my district. I think they've got the same set of concerns. It's at a place where the President has been visiting, and they're turning out to say, We're not buying this solution. My good friend from Pennsylvania, are you getting the same kind of sense from your constituents that there is a deep-seated concern for a plan that is just going to put 16,000 new IRS agents on the line to try and monitor whether you've done the right government thing?

Mr. AKIN. There were 5,000. So more than one out of five were there.

Mr. AKIN. There were 1,100 people in a town that had 1,000 people?

Mr. AKIN. There was no chance for input or anything else. My good friend, Congressman Luetkemeyer, you recently have been elected to Congress. You come from an out-State part of Missouri with a lot of pretty conservative, but Democrats, in your district. Now, what would they have thought if you had voted, first of all, for cutting Medicare? Next, you've got a brilliant idea for a tax on wheelchairs, on medical devices and on something which is going to increase the average person's cost to health care and which is going to force the person to go to the Federal Government ultimately to get health care. What would they have thought of you if you had voted for this thing?

Mr. AKIN. How many of those doctors voted for this bill? Of those 10 doctors you just mentioned, how many voted for this bill?

Mr. AKIN. If you let me just cut in for a second, Doctor, I've actually got that exact quote. Here it is. This is President Obama, June 15, 2009: ``If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. No one will take it away no matter what.'' And yet this center is saying that's not true. Go ahead.

Mr. AKIN. They're going to bankers, those loans are all set up, and when this thing passes, they go, Forget it, we're not going to expand business that way. And so you literally have people you know in the banking business in the State where the President is visiting today, and they're saying, These people came to us and said we don't want your money because we can't make enough profit on it to pay you back because we passed this piece--you keep coming to the same conclusion that--and I don't mean to beat on this a little bit--the solution to this is repeal. We've got to get rid of this thing. I am also joined by another good friend of ours, another doctor who has been a stalwart on this from Georgia, my good friend, Congressman Gingrey. We've just been talking about this tremendous gap between statements that the President is making, and now the gap between what the President is saying and what this Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the center that's collecting the numbers, is saying totally different than what the President is saying. I just wanted your thoughts on that because you've been very much on top of this bill.

Mr. AKIN. I would like to underline that point. We just had my good friend from Tennessee talking about what happened when Tennessee did this crazy harebrained idea and how it really messed up the economy in the State of Tennessee. And now you're saying, actually, if I remember right, is that today the President is coming to Missouri to some degree to assure people that he's concerned with unemployment, and yet what you're telling me is you had small business owners going to bankers--I think you had a banking background, is that right, gentleman?

Mr. AKIN. You're talking about a bill that is actually driving the unemployment worse. It's a bill that's going to create unemployment is what you're saying. That's what this small business owner says. In other words, you're saying he's making enough money as it is now to open additional franchises, but with the cost of this bill, it pushes him under water, which says, I've got to close some rather than open them, and there goes some more jobs. So why in the world are we doing this when we've got an unemployment problem?

Mr. AKIN. I really appreciate you bringing that point up, gentleman, because what you're really saying is there are a whole lot of question marks out there. It almost seems like to me, coming from our State of Missouri, it's almost like maybe you fall off your roof and you land on the ground and you know you hit pretty hard--you get to be an old geezer like me--and you kind of pick yourself up and say, I wonder if anything's broken. You start reaching around to see what's the damage. It seems like now people are kind of asking the question, what's the damage going to be? You really hit the nail on the head. Go ahead, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Mr. AKIN. Wow. Well, we're joined by a good friend of mine who does represent a rural area from the great State of Missouri, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a gentleman that I have already a tremendous amount of respect for, and somebody who is also going to share a couple of his ideas on this whole ridiculous situation with this government takeover of health care. Congressman.

Mr. AKIN. Which is brought on by the bill, is my question.

Mr. AKIN. Yes.

Mr. AKIN. Now there's something here that just seems to be ironic to an extreme. We passed this massive government takeover of health care, and the very people that the President and his administration chose to take a look at and study the effect on Medicare and Medicaid of this proposal are saying it's going to close hospitals; and yet this bill is going to hire 16,000 new IRS agents to try and enforce the plan. You would think if you had a medical bill, you would hire more nurses and doctors. No, we're going to do 16,000 IRS agents.

Mr. AKIN. So they're saying that this new bill, among other things, is going to close hospitals.

Mr. AKIN. Let me just cut to the chase for a minute here. Are you suggesting that with this new proposal, because of the tremendous pressure that's going to be placed on those hospitals, that they're basically going to be starting to close?

Mr. AKIN. Just interrupting for a minute, from a business standpoint, because my background was engineering and business, when a business is running at 1 to 4 percent, that's like if you think about somebody that has to breathe keeping his lips above the water, you don't have much margin there before you go into the red when you're running at 1 to 4 percent.

Mr. AKIN. The Federal Government. What a treat. Every time we take a look at this thing and we discuss it on the floor, no matter which way you poke at it, it seems to me you come to the came conclusion. There's one solution to this problem: repeal this silly bill that we passed. It's a disaster. Congressman Thompson from Pennsylvania, please join us.

Mr. AKIN. Oh, so we're designed to fail because if you get the private system to fail, guess who's going to end up having to run the whole system?

Mr. AKIN. Okay, I'm starting to understand. Doctor, you're great at explaining this stuff. So what you're saying is you've got a certain number of people that are all kicking into the system and paying for medical care. All of a sudden you create a government incentive to dump all those people on the government. Now the government is having to pick it up, and guess who's going to pick up the bill? Well, it's the people who are still buying private insurance. So when you take these people out--the company is not paying for them anymore--now the private insurance guys, their cost goes way up to compensate for these other people because the government is not paying enough to cover the insurance. So if the government puts in 50 cents on the dollar, somebody's got to make up the other 50 cents. Guess who it's going to be? The other poor sucker out there who's trying to buy his own health insurance.

Mr. AKIN. Why wouldn't somebody do that?

Mr. AKIN. So if you are a big company, you can make $40 million by just dumping your employees onto this plan?