W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you were speaking clearly except there was one word I didn't quite catch. I thought you said, was it ``doc fix'' or was it ``doc tricks''?

Mr. AKIN. How many was that, gentleman?

Mr. AKIN. I would like to go to my friend Dr. Gingrey. He's got another very heavy medical concept for us. I can tell. He's got it all cued up here.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate your keeping it in a sort of a big picture form as to what we're talking about on cost.

Mr. AKIN. But the cost supposedly by the Congressional Budget Office was that this was going to cost a trillion dollars, so your figure over there was overweight in costing a trillion dollars. The trouble with this estimate is it's wrong because the Congressional Budget Office took some assumptions when they built it because they were told we've got to keep this thing under a trillion dollars. The problem is, first of all, the Democrat Governor of the State of Tennessee, who has already tried this lovely idea, has taken a look at this and called it the ``monster of unfunded mandates.'' What that means is that that trillion dollars was trimmed one way, was to dump a bunch of the costs down to the various States, aside from the fact that it destroys everything that the State of Utah has set up, which is actually kind of an innovative idea. It destroys that because it says every single health insurance plan has to follow what the Federal Government says. So now they're going to define what health insurance is and that's all there is, one definition. And anybody else that doesn't follow that definition, you know what the bill says. You're going to get fined if you're offered health insurance that doesn't fit with what the government guidelines say. So this trillion dollars is wrong. The other thing they did was they took the trillion dollars and they took the time to calculate this in such a way that the revenue was coming in but the real expenses of the program hadn't hit their peak yet. So they cheated on the two different time scales as to when the money was coming in versus when the costs were going to come. So, in fact, the trillion as the Senate has calculated it is closer to $2 trillion, which is $2 trillion we don't have. I think the gentlewoman Congresswoman Foxx said that there was a survey done that said that Americans believe there is more probability that we're going to discover aliens in outer space than the fact that this thing is ever going to be anything other than a big budget-busting deficit, driving deficit spending. And, you know, there is a pretty good reason why Americans have that common sense, because we've tried these things before. The Federal Government has tried Medicare and Medicaid, and we see their costs are going out of control, and we're told, Trust us. Medicare and Medicaid are going out of control, so we're going to take the whole system over and run it by the government and it's not going to go out of control. I yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. AKIN. That's overhead.

Mr. AKIN. So you're saying that the cost of Medicare is going to go up with this program.

Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, you were here on the floor when we talked about this. We said, Look, all of the mathematics, all the common sense says this is wasting a lot of money that we don't have. We said, It's not going to create jobs. It didn't for Henry Morgenthau when he turned the recession into the Great Depression. We said, The reason it's not is because jobs come from businesses, particularly small businesses. You're hammering the small businesses. At least learn from the Democrats, learn from FDR, learn from Henry Morgenthau. Instead, we've got this half-baked Web site telling us that there's 40 some congressional districts. I mean, you'd think they would at least check how many congressional districts there are in a State.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate that, and I look forward to doing that. I thought you were going to bring some sort of gory medical pictures here.

Mr. AKIN. First of all, the Pelosi bill has all of these mandates in it, and let's just talk about this mandate. This one here is the mandate for, let me get it on the chart, this is the mandate for employers. First of all, employers have to offer a qualified health care plan to all full and part-time employees. What do you think that ``qualified health care plan'' means?

Mr. AKIN. There will be a number of our colleagues who may be watching, and other Americans who are hearing this discussion. Which would you prefer to have? The option that you are offering, which is what Utah is doing--your employer gives you some money, you can go out and use that money to buy something. You can buy one of, what was it, 66 different policies, and try and find something that really fits the need of you and your family. That is one alternative. This is the old Henry Ford alternative: you can have any color car you want as long as it is black. This is the government plan: employers must offer a qualified plan. Who says what qualified is? The Federal Government says what qualified is. How does it work? First of all, the employer has to pay somewhere between 65 and 72 percent of the cost of the plan. Now we have already defined this because the government knows what the employer should provide. It shouldn't be 50, it shouldn't be 80; it has got to be this. Or if you don't do that, you have to pay a tax of 8 percent of the payroll costs. Here is how this works. You have 20 employees. One employee decides he wants something else. That means just one out of 20 doesn't take your plan that the business offered, and now the business gets hit with 8 percent, regardless if the other 19 employees were happy with it. So now they are going to get whacked with this 8 percent tax off of payroll, so you are hammering small business, which makes it less efficient and forces everybody into, guess what, Henry Ford's one color, black. You've got a qualified health care plan. Which qualified health care plan? The one by the Federal Government. You have a choice of one, one, or one. The insurance companies, what are they going to write? The qualified plan. Because if you don't write the qualified plan, what happens is, you get fined by the Federal Government, because you had a nice health plan that fits some people's needs that you thought was a good deal, and you are going to get fined instead. That is mandate. That is not freedom.

Mr. AKIN. Of course this Pelosi bill is going to absolutely torpedo everything that you are talking about, isn't it?

Mr. AKIN. Can I ask you about what you've got, because that's really an exciting concept. First of all, what you're saying is that a small business has some employees, they want to treat their employees right but they also have to make the small business make money so they can say, Look, we're going to put aside this amount of money for each of our employees to help them with health care, but we're going to allow those employees to have some choices as to what they buy. So, for instance, let's just say that I am a husband. I've got a job in small business. I have a wife. And it turns out we know that we're never going to have any children. So I don't really need to get the coverage for childbirth or something that maybe somebody else does. So I could find a policy that would suit, that would be more tailor-made to our family and therefore could get better coverage in some other areas possibly. So you have a way to fine-tune something that meets your particular situation.

Mr. AKIN. So you have portability?

Mr. AKIN. Well, I very much appreciate the gentleman from Utah. Congressman Bishop, you are just an inspiration, and that really is a breath of fresh air flowing through this Chamber, the idea of freedom and the idea of limited government and the idea that we will allow States to solve their own problems instead of the Federal Government, the one-size-fits-all Pelosi plan. And it also takes the pressure off of intense levels of Federal spending that are bankrupting our Nation. We talked about earlier--can you believe that the communist Chinese were telling us that our government is spending too much money and getting too big? That is a wrong day in American history. It is something else. I am joined by Dr. Gingrey from Georgia, who has some great charts. They look more interesting than mine, so I yield to Dr. Gingrey.

Mr. AKIN. We also have my good friend, G.T., joining us. I think it is good to have different people from different States to have a part in this discussion. We haven't had too much of a part because all of the doors have been closed and we have been on the outside, but we have a few ideas. One thing we know how to do is to reduce the cost of health care; and we also know that one size fits all doesn't sound like freedom. Mr. Thompson, I would like to yield to you at this time.

Mr. AKIN. I heard there are over 50 different bills at this point. Some are a combination of different ideas and put together in different ways. You know, you used to be an administrator and you had to deal with red tape and bureaucracy. What we have just done is we have got a 1,990 page bill. It passed with less than 72 hours for the public to review it. It creates 118 new boards, bureaucracies, commissions and programs, and it is full of new mandates. And it contains the word ``shall'' 3,425 times. This is what it looks like. And that doesn't even have all of those 118 new boards on it. This is just a simplified version of it. Now, does that look like something to you that gives you much choices? And second of all, talk about overhead, talk about redtape. You know, we were thinking about, and I see my colleague has come out here with some great sort of cartoons and things, and we were thinking about turning this into a cartoon. We were going to put patients over here and doctors over here, and turn it into a place mat, and we are going to have lines like a maze, and the trick is, before your dinner is cold, to try to get the patient to the doctor. We were going to set the maze up so there wasn't any way to get there, because that is really what this tells you. If you really want good, efficient health care, this thing here is in your way. That's the reason why a great majority of Americans don't believe that the Federal Government can take this thing over and manage it efficiently and effectively without the costs going through the roof and also without degrading health care, because the trouble is no other country has ever been able to do this. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. AKIN. It's called federalism, as I recall.

Mr. AKIN. That's correct. We've been joined, as you know, by my very good friend, Congressman Bishop from Utah, a gentleman that is so commonsense and so straightforward in explaining himself. He has already made a great reputation here, and I would like to yield time to my good friend.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Did you pass one in Ohio? Did you limit the punitive damages in Ohio?

Mr. AKIN. They are saying, Bob, wait just a minute before you walk out with that loaf of bread. The loaf of bread is stale by the time you get out of the store.

Mr. AKIN. Oh, the grocery store. I'm sorry.

Mr. AKIN. After church to the Rotary Club, that's dangerous?

Mr. AKIN. Yes.

Mr. AKIN. Let's get back and get those numbers. We were just talking about this last night. We've got small business and even manufacturers that have been hammered so hard now that they're struggling for breath.