Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The resolution we are considering today is important, and we are pleased to cooperate with the majority's request to discharge it from the Committee on Commerce on an expedited basis. We hope and expect that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will extend the same consideration for issues that we hold important. Our goal must be to work in a timely manner and on a bipartisan basis so that beneficial initiatives can move through this Congress. One out of ten men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime. One out of ten. Forty thousand men will die from it each year. Early detection is critical, and raising awareness about the disease is the best way to promote regular testing. This resolution says we can play a unique role in our districts and through this Congress on the national level also through national exposure to raise public awareness about prostate cancer. In 1994, I founded the Northeast Ohio Breast and Prostate Cancer Task Force to help organize efforts at the local level to combat these cancers. Last Sunday, at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, I had the honor of presenting an award to the Cleveland Indians' Mike Hargrove and Jim Thome on behalf of the team for their support for prostate cancer research. This award is part of the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate and Major League Baseball's 1999 Home Run Challenge. During Father's Day Week, June 20 to 25, every home run hit in 60 selected games will raise money directed towards prostate cancer research. This resolution today, Mr. Speaker, is a statement of the need to do more to fight prostate cancer and to help men who have this illness. But this Congress can and should do much more. We should pass the Patients' Bill of Rights, which would protect prostate cancer patients from arbitrary coverage denials and ensure their access to the right specialists and to clinical trials. We should be aggressive in bringing down the cost of prescription drugs and pass the Prescription Drugs Fairness Act. Drug company markups place barriers in the way of life-saving medicine. And we should move quickly to pass the Breast and Cervical Cancer Act. We should follow through, Mr. Speaker, with initiatives that help prevent and treat prostate cancer and other illnesses that take such a tremendous toll on our families and on our Nation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) who has been a real leader in the fight against breast and prostate cancer on the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), a nurse and a new member of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant). (Mr. TRAFICANT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the debate today and appreciate the good efforts of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) on that side and the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill), the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) on my side. I especially ask this House with bipartisan cooperation to pass H. Res. 211 but also move forward on the Prescription Drug Fairness Act, on the Patients' Bill of Rights, and on the Breast and Cervical Cancer Act. If we could accomplish those health care issues this year, this will have been a very successful Congress.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, many Democrats in the House of Representatives are working together to lower the cost of prescription drugs. We are asking this Congress to pass the Prescription Drug Fairness Act. Unfortunately, the drug companies and my friends on the other side of the aisle do not seem much interested in letting this pass. The drug companies will give lower prices to HMOs, they will give lower drug prices to hospitals, they will give lower drug prices to insurance companies and to the VA, but they charge senior citizens out of pocket literally twice as much in many cases for prescription drugs than they do these preferred buyers. The prescription drug companies are banding together to oppose the Prescription Drug Fairness Act on the House floor. They say that this legislation will stifle innovation and hurt research. They say it will cost them so much money they will not be able to continue to develop new drugs. They do not say anything, Mr. Speaker, about huge executive drug companies' salaries. They do not say anything about record $22 billion drug company profits. They do not say anything about marketing, about salespeople and about the multimillion-dollar lobbying company campaign they are foisting upon us.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on my behalf and on behalf of my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette), I rise to strongly urge the President and the U.S. Government to act on behalf of justice. A Palestinian terrorist in a just-released autobiography admitted he planned the attack against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Mr. Speaker, 11 athletes were murdered in that attack. One of the murdered was David Berger, a middleweight lifter from Shaker Heights, Ohio, with dual American-Israeli citizenship. David's family has been waiting 27 years for justice, to find the killers and to bring them to justice. Palestinian terrorist Abu Daoud says he plotted the senseless murders in Munich. Now is the time for the United States and the world community to marshal its forces to capture Mr. Daoud and bring him before a court of law. We must do this for the memory of David Berger. We must do this for the families of all of the athletes who perished, and we must do this to fight terrorism wherever and whenever we find it.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago this week China's Communist dictatorship sent its tanks and armored carriers crashing through the prodemocracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Hundreds of innocent protesters were crushed to death, hundreds more were mowed down by machine guns, hundreds more were arrested and executed. The men and women who lost their lives in Beijing and the ones who remain jailed are the heirs to the legacy of our Founding Fathers. They quoted Thomas Jefferson, they built a monument fashioned after our Statue of Liberty, they look to the United States as a beacon of hope and of freedom. In the United States, the nation which the thousands of dead at Tiananmen hoped to emulate, is once again coddling the same dictators who had them murdered by renewing China's annual trade privileges. After all, the lure of one billion Chinese low-wage workers is the catalyst of our China policy. Think about it: no pesky unions, no minimum wage laws, no labor standards, no effective court system to scare away investors. The potential for profit, regardless of human rights for American corporations, is enormous. After all, Wall Street bankers could not care less if the shelves at the Lorain, Ohio, K-Mart are lined with goods manufactured by Chinese slave labor. The lawyers in Washington could not care less if Chinese workers are imprisoned for trying to form unions. Win Jingshang, a democracy activist who spent nearly two decades in a Chinese prison, told me that American corporate executives, not Chinese spies but American corporate executives, are the vanguard of the Chinese Communist Party revolution in the United States. It should bother us, all of us, that exactly 10 years after the slaughter of those demonstrators in Tiananmen Square that American CEO's actively roam the government corridors of the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship. It should bother all of us that after cavorting with the butchers of Beijing, these American CEOs streamed into Ronald Reagan National Airport to argue for continued favors, continued trade advantages for the world's worse abuser of human rights. It should bother all of us that the brutal nature of China's Communist regime is totally ignored by all too many in America's business community. The harsh reality is that the ongoing genocide in Tibet, continued arrest, and torture of democracy activists, proliferation of nuclear technology to North Korea, none of that matters very much to too many people in America's business community. To this I say, the most effective way to toughen our relationship with China is to deny it special trading privileges. Every year I and others in this body have prodded the administration and the Republican leadership to force China to improve its behavior before giving it preferential trade status. These benefits give China's Communist Party dictators billions and billions of dollars, last year it was 60 billion to be precise, and the commercial technology needed to modernize the People's Liberation Army. Yet each year the same GOP, the same Republican Members of Congress who are the loudest in their criticism of the Clinton administration and its China policy turn around because of corporate business influence in this body, turn around and give Beijing preferential trade status. Mr. Chairman, what we need to do before granting special trade status to the Communist Chinese is to condition their behavior on something other than what they say. I, for one, am weary of continued Chinese Communist promises that they will behave, they will play fair, they will stop human rights abuses, they will end child labor, they will stop forced abortions, they will begin to behave, they will stop selling nuclear technology to rogue nations, that they will begin to play by the rules. It was Mao, quoting Soviet leader Lenin, who liked to state promises are like pie crusts, they are made to be broken. Mr. Speaker, I ask the administration, I ask the President, I ask Republican leadership in this body, I ask the American business community, all of whom are far too strongly supportive of the World Trade Organization entry for China, I ask them to step back and let us see if China can behave for 1 year. We should demand to see if China can stop its human rights abuses, can stop its child labor and slave labor practices, can stop threatening Taiwan before receiving another dollar from U.S. business interests. We must not give China special trading privileges, Mr. Speaker, until we see proof that its Communist Party leaders are capable of abiding by world standards.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine and I want to also thank and laud the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) for all of the good work that he has done, and all the others here this evening who have shown leadership on perhaps the most important issue facing America, America's elderly population. Last year the CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb made a $1.2 million salary, a $1.9 million bonus, and $30.4 million in stock options. Last year, drug company profits outpaced those of every other industry by more than 5 percentage points. Millions of dollars for executives, billions of dollars in profits. Last year, 4.5 million seniors filled their prescriptions OR purchased food. They had to make that choice. They could not afford both. Millions of dollars for executives, billions of dollars in profits, yet senior citizens had to choose between food and medication. Seniors are paying higher prices for prescription drugs than any other purchaser because drug companies simply know they can get away with it. Medications are not luxury items, seniors have little market clout, and drug companies wield monopoly power. As a result, seniors pay prices set high enough to generate unrivaled profit margins and compensate for the discounts offered to other, more influential purchasers. The highest prices are charged to those least able to afford prescription drugs and most likely to need prescription drugs. What kind of system is that? Drug companies tell us it is the right system. They say if the United States no longer permits drug companies to gouge individual senior citizens, or even if we provide a meaningful insurance vehicle that puts seniors on an equal footing with other large purchasing groups, drug industry profits, they tell us, will be so stifled that innovation in medical progress will stop dead. That is what they tell us. But how much do these companies need to earn over and above their research and development costs to feel sufficiently appreciated? Drug companies earn exorbitant profits by charging seniors double, sometimes triple, even occasionally quadruple, what they charge large purchasers inside the United States and individual purchasers, and large purchasers outside the United States. Even seniors with prescription drug coverage are often overwhelmed by their prescription expenses. In Medicare supplemental plans, for example, when one gets past the deductible, the modest annual limit and the 50 percent coinsurance, coverage just does not look much like coverage anymore. In 1999, 5 million seniors, some with and others without drug coverage, will pay more than $1,000 out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. About 1 million will pay $2,000 or more for prescription drugs. These numbers could be significantly lower if seniors were simply treated like other customers. Prescription drug companies claim that if we take action to protect seniors from price gouging, everyone else's prescription drug prices will go up. Apparently, drug companies cannot tolerate any reduction in their record-breaking profits. They must compensate for charging seniors reasonable prices by upping the prices charged to other payers. I would like to again thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) for the Democratic proposal, the Prescription Drug Fairness For Seniors Act, which prevents drug companies from singling the elderly out, charging them distorted prices relative to other purchasers. This bill makes sense. I hope the Republican leadership will do its jobs and demand that drug companies are held accountable.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Preventive care for prostate cancer, for breast cancer, for osteoporosis, for diabetes, a whole host of new preventive care programs paid for by Medicare all in the last 2 or 3 years. That is something people should certainly take advantage of.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The comments of the gentleman from Florida about people without insurance actually are sicker, get sicker is particularly applicable to prescription drugs. We all have heard stories in our district similar to the one in the city of Elyria in my district, a woman who is paying $400 for her prescription drugs, her Social Security is about $800 a month, she has no prescription drug coverage. What she does with her prescriptions is she typically takes half the dosage that she needs. If she is supposed to take four pills a day, she will take two or take four half pills a day so her prescription will last twice as long. She is more likely to get sick and end up back in the hospital, more likely to suffer and more likely to cost the Medicare system more money because the system is not paying for prescription drugs and not dealing with some of the preventive care and wellness care and less expensive care, like prescription drugs, than emergency room or hospital stays. That is one reason, putting even the humanitarian element aside, looking at the importance of taking care of this woman and hundreds of thousands like her around the country. The health of the Medicare system long-term will be in better fiscal shape if we can do some of these things like prescription drugs, put a better system out there for America's elderly and make it more fiscally sound at the same time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If I could reclaim my time for a moment, following up on what you are saying and what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green) said about people that work with their hands, that start working, a neighbor of mine is a carpenter. He started working when he was about 18, he is about my age, in his mid 40's. He cannot quite lift as much as he used to be able to. If we let Republicans raise the Medicare age to 67, then they will look at the actuarial tables and they will say the average person is living another year longer and raise it to 68. It is simply not fair to the large number of people in this country who do not dress like this when they come to work, whose bodies really do not allow them to work until they are 67 or 68. It really shows how out of touch people are in this institution and in this city, and especially on that side of the aisle that really do think, well, because people are living longer, we will raise the Social Security age, the Medicare age, because people are living to be 80 and they can take care of themselves. The fact is, as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) is implying, people between the ages of 55 and 64, the age that we want to move Medicare coverage and include them, those in that age group, there are so many people in that age group that are losing their health care coverage because they are getting laid off, their company is downsizing, their company is moving to Mexico or somewhere else. There are people that have many more health demands, many more health needs as they are 60 years old compared to when they are 50 years old. They are getting their health care cut off from their employer when they lose their job or when their employer cuts benefits when they are 59 years old, right at the time they most begin to need their health care. For this body to endorse moving the age up to 67 is absolutely absurd. We should be thinking of moving the opposite direction, especially since the President's plan and the plan that all of us have worked on actually pays for itself in the cost of the premium between the ages of 55 and 64. It is no giveaway program, as Medicare is not, anyway. But particularly this part of it, expanding it to 55 to 64, voluntarily pays for itself and will make a difference in the lives of literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans in that age group who no longer have the health insurance coverage they figured that they would have from their employer until their 65th birthday, until they could move into Medicare.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I want to add that the leadership of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), especially in his efforts to fight Republican efforts to privatize Medicare, have been very, very important in our so far successful efforts to do that. One point, before calling on the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch), and that is that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) repeatedly has talked about the success of Medicare; that it is a program that almost no one in this country, except for some insurance company executives, some Wall Street analysts, and some Washington political pundits and their representatives in the Republican Party say that that Medicare is that broke. There are not huge demands from across the country in any of our districts clamoring for Medicare to be so radically changed. Sure, it needs some changes; sure, it needs some fixes; but it is not a broken program. It is serving people in this country very well. And this kind of radical surgery proposed by Republicans is dead wrong.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by my friends, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). For the next hour we are going to talk about efforts that the majority party has tried to improve Medicare in this system, perhaps the single best government program of our lifetime, that has brought half the population in this country, really has provided health care for half the senior population. In 1965 when Medicare was created, only about half of America's elderly had health insurance. Today 99-plus percent of America's elderly do. Mr. Speaker, many in Congress have been on a campaign to scare America's seniors into believing that Medicare is going bankrupt. They say that Medicare must be improved in order to save it. Once again, Medicare privatizers are wrong. The Trustees of the Medicare Trust Fund have just reported that Medicare will remain solvent through the year 2015, up from its earlier projection just a year ago of 2008. Republicans in Congress, the Washington, D.C. think tanks, and their media supporters who want to privatize Medicare are wringing their hands over the Trustees' latest report. They believe these new projections will lead Congress to do nothing toward reforming social security and Medicare. With the programs projected to last longer, they tell us we cannot rest on our laurels. The real threat to Medicare, however, is not its alleged pending bankruptcy. The real threat is a proposal just rejected by the National Medicare Commission to privatize Medicare and to deliver it to the private insurance market. Under a proposal soon to be introduced called premium support, Medicare would no longer pay directly for health care services. Instead, it would provide each senior with a voucher good for part of the premium for health care, for private health care coverage. Medicare beneficiaries could use this voucher to buy into the fee-for-service plan sponsored by the Federal Government, or could join a private plan. To encourage consumer price sensitivity, the voucher would track to the lowest cost private plan. Ostensibly, seniors would shop for the plan that best suits their needs, paying the balance of the premium or paying extra if they want higher quality. The proposal would create a system of health coverage, but it would abandon Medicare's fundamental principle, its fundamental principle of egalitarianism. Today the Medicare program is income-blind. All seniors have access to the same level of care. The idea that vouchers would empower seniors to choose a health plan that best suits their needs is simply a myth. The reality is that seniors will be forced to accept whatever plan they can afford. The goal of the Medicare Commission was to ensure the program's long- term solvency. The premium support proposal will not do that. Supporters of the voucher plan say it could shave 1 percent per year from the Medicare budget over the next few decades. That is still not enough to prevent insolvency, and it is surely based on much too optimistic projections of private sector performance. Bruce Vladeck, a former administrator of the Medicare program and the Medicare Commission, a bipartisan Commission Member, doubted the Commission plan would save the Federal Government $1. That same proposal under a legislative plan, under a legislative title, will not succeed, either. Efforts to privatize Medicare are, of course, nothing new. Medicare beneficiaries have long been able to enroll in private managed care plans. Their experience, however, does not bode well for a full-fledged privatization effort. These managed care plans are already calling for higher government payments. They are dropping out of unprofitable markets, and they are cutting back on benefits to senior citizens. Managed care plans obviously are profit-driven, and they simply do not tough it out when those profits are not realized. We learned this the hard way last year when 96 Medicare HMOs unceremoniously dropped 400,000 Medicare beneficiaries because the HMOs did not meet their profit objectives. Before the Medicare program was launched in 1965, more than one-half of the Nation's seniors were uninsured. Private insurance was the only option for the elderly. But these insurers did not want senior citizens to join their plans because they knew that seniors use their coverage. The private insurance market surely has changed considerably since then, but it still avoids high-risk enrollees and, whenever possible, dodges the bill for high-cost medical services. The problem is not necessarily malice or greed, it is the expectation that private insurers can serve two masters, the bottom line and the common good. Logically, looking at the bottom line, our system leaves 43 million people without health insurance, 11 million of whom are children. Only Medicare can insure the elderly and disabled population because the private market had failed to do so. If we privatize Medicare, we are telling America that not all seniors deserve the same level of health care. We are betting on a private insurance system that puts its own interests ahead of health care quality and a balanced Federal budget. Look at efforts to privatize in other parts of government, efforts to privatize our public pension system. The mission of a private pension system is to make a profit. The mission of a public pension system, like social security, is to provide a decent amount of money, a decent standard of living, for people as they are older. The mission of a private prison is the bottom line, to make a profit. The mission of a public prison is public safety, punishment, and rehabilitation. The mission of a privatized national park system, as many Republicans in this body have proposed, is to make a profit in commercialization. The purpose of a public national park system is to provide green space, to provide entertainment, to provide places for Americans to go and enjoy life with their families in secluded areas in national parks. The point is, privatization of the greatest part of our health care system, Medicare, the mission of privatization for insurance companies is the bottom line, is to make a profit. But the purpose of our public health care system, our Medicare system, is to provide a decent amount of health care so that older people can live their lives more productively, can live their lives longer, can live their lives in a more healthy sort of way. Mr. Speaker, Republicans earlier this evening, two of my friends from Arizona, talked about choice and how the great thing about privatization of Medicare is choice. The fact is, under Medicare fee- for-service, people have choice in this system. They can choose their doctor, they can choose their hospital. Managed care privatization of Medicare is taking away that choice, and ultimately it will reduce quality. The goal is simple: Let us keep Medicare the successful public program that it always has been. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think that both the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) both touched on the history of Medicare and who really was responsible for this program, and I think it begs the question of whom do we trust to make changes in Medicare? In 1965, Medicare, with an overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress, the Congress passed the program setting up Medicare. Many Republicans opposed it. In fact, Bob Dole, who was then the leader of the other body and later was the Republican nominee for President in 1996, was in 1995 bragging to a conservative group on whom he counted for the Republican nomination for President, bragging about who he was one fighting against Medicare against its creation in 1965 as a Member of the House of Representatives at that point because he knew it would not work and he wanted to defeat it. Literally the same day, then Speaker Gingrich said he wanted to see Medicare wither on the vine. It is the same group of people that opposed Medicare in 1965. The conservative wing of the Republican party which now dominates the Republican party are the people that really do not like Medicare. In 1993, when Medicare was in some trouble, this Congress and I know the four of us all supported the efforts of this Congress to make some relatively minor changes in Medicare, some cuts to some providers that were probably making too much money at the time and some minor changes in the program of some significance but, by and large, did not affect Medicare beneficiaries particularly but made the program a good deal fiscally stronger in 1993. Again, every Republican in this institution voted against it then. Then, 2 years later, Republicans tried to cut Medicare $270 billion. At the same time, they were giving a tax break mostly to wealthy taxpayers of roughly the same number of dollars and it was another assault on Medicare. And every time we turn our backs or we forget to watch or we are not vigilant, we see the conservative wing, not all Republicans, but the conservative wing of the Republican party which dominates that party in the 1990's go after Medicare. And before we think about radical surgery on this program, the program of Medicare, we need to think whom do we trust? Do we trust the people that never liked Medicare to begin with, the far right of the Republican party? Do we trust them to make changes, the voucher program that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) talked about? Or do we trust people who supported this program, people like us that have supported it all along, mainstream Democrats, the President who supports it? Do we trust this group of people to make some minor changes to continue to keep Medicare strong?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey, and now I want to yield to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch), a prominent member of the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Committee on Commerce, and thank him for his help.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Florida, and I want to now introduce another good friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green), who has been a member of the Subcommittee on Health and Environment for 3 years now and has done a good job.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. In closing, I think, Mr. Speaker, the commitment for all of us, all four of us that have been here tonight, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is start with the 15 percent budget surplus, put it in Medicare, put those over the next half dozen, dozen years, hundreds of billions of dollars into Medicare. The trust fund already is solid until 2015. We can even do better than that. Make sure the preventive care is explained as well as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch) did, and we continue to talk about that, and expand Medicare 55 to 64, and especially programs like prescription drugs. I thank my colleagues for joining us tonight.