W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. I yield to my good friend who has joined us at this time, not a medical doctor, but known for his seniority on the Intelligence Committee. So we have a guy who is intelligent. Please join us, Congressman Hoekstra.

Mr. AKIN. That's not exactly an encouraging thought. We've had a guy who's the top guy in intelligence and two doctors, and I don't know what I'm doing in this conversation at all. But I know one thing. I've had some experience with health care in the sense that I'm a cancer survivor. I was one of those guys in my early fifties. I came to Congress, bulletproof, and I'd had a very lousy insurance plan provided by the State of Missouri, and I hadn't had a physical for a long time. I thought I was bulletproof. But somebody told me, hey, when you get to be over 50 you need to go get yourself a physical checkup. So I waltzed down to the doctor's office right here in this Capitol building run by the Navy doctors. They said yeah, Todd, you are bulletproof and you're doing great, except one little detail. You have cancer. You have prostate cancer. I'm going, oh my goodness. Let me tell you--doctors, you know--that gets your attention when they use the big C word. We've talked about people who are pro-life. They're going to hate this bill. We've talked about older people because their care is going to be rationed. They're going to hate this bill because Medicare is going to be decimated and they lose their insurance, in spite of the promises. The bill says everybody's insurance is going to be government insurance. But let's talk about somebody who gets cancer. If you go over to the United Kingdom, they've got this kind of socialized medicine. And let's take a look at the United States. The survival rate for cancer in men--that's got my attention--62.9 percent in America. In the United Kingdom, 44.8. That says you have an 18 percent greater probability you're going to die in the U.K. because of their socialized medicine. If you're a woman it's a little bit better. Cancer survivors in women in the U.S., 66.3. They're doing a little better than the men. And in the U.K. a little better still. Fourteen percent greater chance you're going to die over there. So if you're a cancer person, you don't want this plan. You don't want this socialized medicine. If you're pro-life, you don't want this thing. If you're an older person, you don't want this thing.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield.

Mr. AKIN. That's breast on that side. I can tell a breast from a prostate, gentleman. But go ahead.

Mr. AKIN. I can see the chart maybe better than you can, gentleman, from where I'm standing. What I see, the purple is the United States. Prostate cancer, I'm seeing somewhere between 90 and 100 percent survival rate, and I'm seeing the sort of greenish bluish color is England. I'm seeing something about the 50 or 40 percent survival rate. So you're saying this generalized cancer statement, it's a lot different with prostate. It's almost 2-1 difference. In other words, in Canada, it's a flip of a coin whether you're going to live, whereas the United States, it's a good chance you're going to live fine.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield.

Mr. AKIN. This is interesting because our constituents have been telling us jobs are a problem, unemployment is a problem. Now we've set some records. In the last 6 months, we have lost more jobs than ever in any time period since the Great Depression in America. We've lost more jobs in the last 6 months than have ever been lost since the Great Depression. So this is a serious thing.

Mr. AKIN. A whole lot more burden on the small business man, and guess what happens? It doesn't create the jobs. In fact, you start to lose jobs.

Mr. AKIN. Why are they going to lose their jobs?

Mr. AKIN. I yield to Congressman Broun.

Mr. AKIN. Small business. You take their money away so they can't invest in new buildings, new pieces of machinery, and guess what happens? They don't make the jobs. So if you're unemployed, you're not going to like this very well, are you?

Mr. AKIN. The gentleman was just talking a minute ago. You said you're talking to your constituents. A powerful tool that we have is to have a computer call a lot of our constituents and we just can sit and have a conversation for an hour or two. I did that last night with my constituents. You know what I heard about? Jobs. Where are the jobs? You know who's really not going to like this program here is people that are looking for jobs. Let me connect the dots here. Where do 80 percent of the new jobs in America come from? They come from small business. That is 500 or less employees, 500 or less employees. That's where we make 80 percent of our new jobs. And who's going to pay for this mess? Guess what?

Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, going back to the whole premise, if you do it really fast and nobody knows what's in it, you don't have as many people that are going to say don't vote for this thing, because they don't know what's there. We've been joined by another fantastic Congressman from Louisiana, a man who's not spent that much time in the House, has distinguished himself already for being articulate and a very penetrating questioner of some of these different schemes that we see, my good friend Congressman Scalise from Louisiana.

Mr. AKIN. Are you trying to tell me our constituents actually want us to read the bill and know what's in it before we vote on it? Now that's a novel--

Mr. AKIN. You've already given me a headache.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. This bill isn't going to cost anything. The Congressional Budget Office first comes out and says it's $2 trillion, and then they whittle some numbers by some little fancy stuff, and it comes down to $1 trillion, and he says this is going to help the economy and is not going to cost anything. That's a little bit like his promise when he said, Listen to me now. He said, If you're making under $250,000, there won't be any tax on you, except we've got this little deal that, when you flip on a light switch, you're going to get taxed. Who doesn't flip on a light switch?

Mr. AKIN. 9.5 percent.

Mr. AKIN. I would like to talk a little bit about the President's ability to predict the future in terms of his numbers because, as I recall, just 3 months ago, we were taking a look at what was supposed to be called a ``stimulus bill.'' Some of us called it a ``porkulus bill.'' Anyway, it was about a tremendous amount of spending. I think it was $787 billion in spending. The President gave us a number that we could take to the bank. He said, Look, if you guys do not pass this stimulus bill, why, we might have unemployment as high as 8 percent in America. So we passed this tremendous spending bill. Let's see. What's our unemployment now?

Mr. AKIN. And yet every Republican standing here tonight, we all stand behind that doctor-patient relationship. That's what medical care should be about. It was a straight party-line vote, with the exception of only one Democrat.

Mr. AKIN. I voted ``no'' on that too.

Mr. AKIN. It was my first year here.

Mr. AKIN. Just a moment now because I think you are making a point. The Democrats were here about an hour-and-a-half ago. They were saying, Hey, we don't like the idea that an insurance company rations your care, an insurance company gets between a doctor and a patient. As a Republican, I don't like that idea either; but the solution isn't to put an even bigger bureaucrat in the way. The solution is to get back to the doctor-patient relationship, which is why you practice medicine.

Mr. AKIN. The wealthy.

Mr. AKIN. Could I just jump in for a minute? There are different categories of people who aren't going to like this bill; but there are people who just hate government redtape. Genetically, I don't like government redtape. Can you picture trying to get a health care decision and something that's messed up, and you have got a wife or kid that needs health care, and you've got to deal with this to try to get health care, and these people are going to tell you whether or not you can get it? You know the one thing in my telephone townhall meeting people said that they want more than anything else, they want health care decisions made between the doctor and the patient. We offered that amendment in committee, and it was voted down on a party-line vote. The Democrats saying that they want the redtape bureaucrats to make health care decisions, and they voted against an amendment that said that the doctor and the patient should make the health care decisions. Now that's not where the mainstream of America is, and that's not why you doctors are practicing medicine--to have a bureaucrat tell you how to practice medicine. It gets me upset.

Mr. AKIN. I hope they don't rescue it much more.