W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Now England and Canada have had this socialized medicine for years. Are they known for the innovation that those countries have added to health care?

Mr. AKIN. So what I'm hearing you say, gentleman, then, is this. Let's just assume if you're a company, for every dollar you put into R&D, you get the same benefit out. You're saying you're going to slash the R&D budget of some of the big innovators in medicine; you're going to slash it by half because you're going to tax them?

Mr. AKIN. Wait. Wait. Wait. You're going too fast for me. This is absolutely incredible. What you're saying is one of the most brilliant parts of American health care has been the innovation, has been all the new drugs, the new devices, the new procedures. As I mentioned, I'm 62 now. I have gotten to be an old geezer, and my left hip has been giving me trouble. You see me limping around, and I'm going to be looking at a hip replacement. Those weren't available 25, 30 years ago.

Mr. AKIN. Rationing is something we need to give some thought to. My good friend from Indiana.

Mr. AKIN. That's not a lot of fat.

Mr. AKIN. I'd just like to cut in a little bit on you, gentleman. When you've raised this point that Medicare pays for whatever it is, 80 or 90 percent of the actual cost of a procedure. So what that's saying is, whenever a doctor treats a Medicare patient, what's really happening is there's more cost than actually is being paid by Medicare. So what that means is at a certain point, if you were to reduce what Medicare is paying, there's going to come a point where a doctor says, enough already. I just can't afford to cover any more Medicare patients because, guess what, I'm going to have to cover some other patients, and I'm going to have to charge them 120 percent to make up for the 80 percent over here because we're cost shifting. So, in other words, what's happening is somebody is having to pay more. So now what we're going do is take $500 billion out of this. And what's that mean? Somebody else is going to have to pay more.

Mr. AKIN. Another party-line vote. Just amazing, isn't it? Well, you know, if you take a look at what the Senate is talking about doing, you can understand why there's this amazing gap, because the public opinion polls are showing that people are not very comfortable with what we're talking about jumping into, and for the sake of whatever it is, 10 or 20 million people, destroying the health care of 100 million. And this, these are some of the costs: It raises premiums, and it reduces the health choices which we've been talking about. Those health choices are very important. It delays or denies care. This thing here, delaying and denying care, as a cancer survivor, I understand the importance of this because if you don't get it and get it quick, you're a goner. And so this idea of rationing and postponing and having to wait in queues, which is endemic in England and Canada, that's something that we don't--that's a high cost. We've got some other costs here. We've been joined by my good friend from Iowa, Congressman King, and I imagine you might have a few thoughts on these subjects as well.

Mr. AKIN. And that's one of the talking points as we talked to one of the Senators this morning about the new--because we're getting information about what the Senate is doing, and that was one of their things--it reduces health choices. I think the whole point of the policy is Americans don't all necessarily want the same policy. You know, if you've got a medical savings account, which is something that we have supported, so you can put money aside to cover different things, and you've got a lot of money in that medical savings account, the insurance you may want would be what we used to call a major medical policy. It covers the great big things, but the smaller stuff, you can say, hey, I can afford to take a thousand or $2,000 hit because I've got enough money in my medical savings account that I don't need to pay for a policy that covers everything. Somebody else who's just starting, and maybe they're a little bit worried about they just can't take anything, they're going to want a policy that covers a lower deductible. And depending--as you made eloquently clear, one size doesn't fit all. It's not the, You can have any car you want as long as it's black. We've got choices in America. And what this Democrat Senate plan, and it is Democrat, does--there's only, huge news, one Republican, just one, that ventured to vote for this thing; everybody else is against it--it reduces health choices. That's not the way you save money, and it's not the way you provide good health care. Very good points, gentleman. I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. AKIN. A vote isn't an opinion. It's a hard and historic fact, yes.

Mr. AKIN. Well, let's just review a few of those amendments. The first thing is, you don't want illegal immigrants to be tapping into the money for the health care. Another one was saying we weren't going to use health care to pay for abortions. So that was one that, I mean, a lot of Americans are thinking, I don't really want my--whether you're for or against abortions, I'm not sure I want my money being used to give people free abortions. And then there was a question about the doctor-patient relationship. Are we going to ration health care with bureaucrats, some calculator, some computer that says, well, at your age and at this and such, you don't get any? And so you've got an amendment that says that you're going to have a doctor-patient relationship that is going to be sacred, and that you're going to allow the doctor and patient to make medical decisions. All those amendments offered in committee go down on a straight party-line vote.

Mr. AKIN. Just for some people that might not be familiar with the way the House works, when this bill, this medical bill, whatever it is that the Democrats come up with, it comes to the floor, they're not going to let us offer any of the amendments that are going to be in any way embarrassing or debate them or discuss them. It's going to be a take-it-or-leave-it. The train is leaving; either get on or stand on the platform with your hat in your hand.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield to my friend from Indiana.

Mr. AKIN. This is the illegal immigrants getting access to the money of Americans that are paying money for health care.

Mr. AKIN. Till 5 'o clock in the morning?

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

Mr. AKIN. Isn't that amazing? This is why Americans to some degree are upset. They're upset about the points you made. They would like us to have 72 hours to at least look at a bill and read it. And then, they're not too fond of the idea they're going to get cracked for $400 billion or $500 billion taken out of Medicare. Certainly senior citizens aren't too fond of that. Some people don't like the idea of having to pay for illegal immigrants' health care services. This is very clear from the Congressional Research Service that what the President said just flat isn't true. And if that were not enough for you, here's an amendment by one of our colleagues, Congressman Heller. This is another one of these amendments that takes place in committees where people don't see it so much. This is going to clarify this statement that the President made. In order to utilize the public health insurance option, an individual must have had his or her eligibility determined and approved under the Income Eligibility Verification System, IEVS, and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement, SAVE programs under section 1137 of the Social Security Act. So, in other words, what we're saying is, we're going to make sure, we're going to card you at the liquor store. When you buy those cigarettes, we're going to card you. That's what this amendment says. You notice it says ``failed'' down here at the bottom. It failed why? Well, because here's the Republicans. They all voted for it. Here's the Democrats. They all voted against it. There are more Democrats so this amendment is history. So the President says, we're not going to have any illegal immigrants, but, in fact, the Congressional Research Service and this amendment and the vote on this amendment bears testimony that that just isn't true.

Mr. AKIN. Yes, I do yield.

Mr. AKIN. Let's talk about cost. You've got $400 billion in new taxes, and you're going to take another 400 or $500 billion out of Medicare. So right off the bat when you say, Here's this new piece of legislation, what do I get for it, well, first of all, $400 billion in taxes, 400 or $500 billion out of Medicare. That's something, just as we started talking. It raises this kind of commonsense question: You've got over a hundred million Americans that have insurance and doctors and health care that they like pretty well, and they don't really want to change; they're content with what they've got, and in order to try to fix what problem, you've got somewhere between 10 and 20 or 10 and 30 million who don't have health care, maybe could afford it but don't. And so in order to do the 10 or 20, you're going to basically take apart the system for a hundred, which also raises kind of a commonsense question, too. I just don't quite see that. There are a lot of claims going on. Here's one: ``There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.'' This is the President. This is his claim. But let's take a look and see, well, what does the fine print say. This is the Congressional Research Service. This is a nonpartisan group. They've studied the bill that the President was talking about. They say: Health insurance exchange would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside public option. H.R. 3200--that's Speaker Pelosi's bill--does not contain any restriction on noncitizens. It does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens, whether legally or illegally present or in the United States temporarily or permanently participating in this exchange.

Mr. AKIN. Isn't that the new study on the Democrat Senate plan? Isn't that where that was done?

Mr. AKIN. Wait a minute now. You got my attention. The average American family, the proposal that's being offered is it's going to add $1,700 more a year for the cost of their medical insurance?

Mr. AKIN. We've been talking about how do you deal with some of the different questions in health care. What has just been illustrated here is the fact that Republicans do have a number of ideas. One of those is tort reform. You're not talking about the fact that if a doctor makes a mistake that the patient shouldn't be made whole; but what you're talking about is this wild, punitive damage kind of thing which just introduces such a wild card for the insurance companies that they run the cost of insurance up and then the doctors practice all this defensive medicine, which my friend from Indiana is pointing out as well; and any doctor you talk to will explain that that's just standard. We don't necessarily like it, but politically the Democrat Party doesn't want to allow dealing with that tort reform. Now, the President did make a comment about it, and it is kind of the elephant in the room, but it's a big cost to health care that could be dealt with. We're joined also by my good friend from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise. Please join us.

Mr. AKIN. Yes.

Mr. AKIN. I think my friend from Indiana had a comment on that. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. Oh, tort reform.

Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, you've got all of our curiosity up. How can we get $26 billion? You say there is a line item of $26 billion that you could work on.