Steven LaTourette

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. McCotter, before I go to you for your comments, we agreed that PhRMA takes out Medicare in this particular round one?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I want to just elaborate for a minute on the gentleman's point about the insurance companies, because in all of the remarks--and the President was recently in Strongsville, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland, giving what was described as his closing argument to get it done. Again, the health care insurance companies are singled out for being particularly greedy and so forth and so on. So, like the pharmaceutical companies, you wouldn't think that there would be any special provisions for medical insurance companies in the bill. But if you said that, you would be wrong, because, again, Nebraska rears its ugly head, but also the State of Michigan. In Michigan and Nebraska--and, Mr. Speaker, to those who may follow along at home or on the Internet, if you go to section 10905 of the Senate bill, which we will deem on Sunday, it levees an annual new health fee, the taxes we are talking about, on all health care insurers. And, again, that additional tax on everybody's health care coverage--which, again, something that mystifies some of us on this side is: If you recognize we have a problem with preexisting conditions, if you recognize we have a problem with people that we need to get coverage so that they get adequate care, why do we have to horse around with the other 85 percent of the people in the country who are satisfied with what they have? But, in order to raise money for this program, a new tax is put on health insurance companies; however, the bill provides an exemption to a narrow group of companies. This section will specifically exempt Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Nebraska and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan. Now, I know that the gentleman from Michigan, probably his constituents may see some benefits from that, but I doubt you are jumping for joy over that. Again, like all of these special deals, that is not fair. I mean, how can it be fair in a competitive marketplace if you are buying insurance from a health care insurance company and one company has to pay a tax and two companies--well, all companies have to pay a new tax except for two?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. And I want to go back to Mr. Tiberi's observation, because the published reports that I saw about PhRMA were not only reimportation of drugs from Canada, that they would be protected from that--and that actually gets into our next matchup, Waxman versus PhRMA, because the reported deal in the newspapers was that the pharmaceutical companies would pony up $8 billion over the next 10 years, and in return for that--because, again, money needs to be raised. People are arguing about the numbers and what it does to the budget, but I think almost every American understands it is counterintuitive that you can insure more people and it is going to cost less.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. And I want to move to this Waxman-PhRMA matchup because, as we have indicated, the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee is a crafty veteran, not tall in terms of height, but he has been around the game a long time and he knows the way the game is played. PhRMA, with a lot of muscle, came into this thing, and they thought that the deal that they made was, if they ponied up $8 billion, they would be held harmless, not only from reimporting drugs from Canada-- which I really don't understand. Everything that I have read says that if you could reimport drugs from Canada, you could cut the cost about 28 percent. Even if it is only 20 percent, who cares. But the argument that has been made by both Republican and Democratic administrations is that it is not safe. We can't trust it if it is coming back from Canada. Now, I would argue that if that were true--my district has one of the longest areas on Lake Erie up in Ohio. If that was true, I would go home to my district and find a lot of dead Canadians floating up on the beaches, and that is just not happening. The second piece of that is that the deal as reported was that not only would they not get any reimportation in the legislation, but they would not have to be subject--because the government is now under this program, or the proposed program, and become a big customer for drugs, that there would be no provision in the bill that the government could compete for best price. And I can remember when we did Medicare part D--I think both gentlemen were here for that--and speech after speech from our friends over here, and I happen to agree with them, that it is nuts. Everybody can go in and negotiate for best price except us? But the deal was, between PhRMA and the White House, was: No. No negotiation for the price. But a funny thing happened, I think, to PhRMA on the way to the deal. They ran into the wily veteran from California and he said, Oh, no, you don't. So I have to give this to Waxman, unless anybody has a problem with it. All right. We are actually past it, now almost into the quarter finals. We have got Pelosi versus Stupak, MoveOn.org versus Rahm, and the People versus Senator Reid.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. We have a few more, but we need to pick up this one, this one, and that one.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think the gentleman is right, but I think the cat is out of the bag on this. And I would say that perhaps--well, sadly, they are both on the eastern time zone. But I think that, for the purposes of this discussion, we can say that this bracket is on the East Coast and these games will start later.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. It is like ``The Sting'' with Paul Newman and Robert Redford where they pretaped the race. We don't intend to do that. Again, Mr. Speaker, we'd encourage people watching at home to not wager on the brackets or any sporting event. So we're going to give this one to Senator Reid. Mr. Tiberi, do you want to talk about MoveOn.org?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think we have about 15 minutes.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Go ahead.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. We're going to have to come back to that in just a second. There was a label around here someplace, and I can't find it.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I was going to say about this matchup, there's really not a big difference between the two. You could declare this matchup a tie. But I think that, again, that perhaps it goes to the President's Chief of Staff. He's a pretty powerful guy. Are we all right with that?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think that's right. I thank the gentleman. So while I look for my Rahm sticker to put up here, why don't you fellows go back to the East Coast. We have two games up. The People versus Senator Reid.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Why don't we do that?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Not yet.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. That really is one of my favorite things. We've had a lot of artificial deadlines. We had to have the stimulus bill by President's Day. I don't know whether George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were calling for it. We had to have cap-and-trade by the Fourth of July. I couldn't tell you why. And we were told we had to have the Senate bill by Christmas. So you had sort of this strange sight of these octogenarians sleeping on cots over on the other side of the Capitol. More show than play. But we're going to give this to Senator Reid.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. And a height advantage.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think I agree with that. There are a couple of rumors out of the trainers' room that Mr. Stupak will in fact need medical attention for some twisted arms and legs as a result of this. But while we were talking, I found the Rahm Emanuel sticker, so we're going to slap that up there. Mr. Tiberi, any disagreement here about the Speaker versus Mr. Stupak?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. We're down to two games to come to the semifinals. Let's go over to Senator Reid and Chairman Waxman. What do you think? Mr. TIBERI: Well, while the cagey veteran from California put up a pretty good game, I think it's hard to top the Christmas Eve dealings of Senator Reid and the Senate bill, which ultimately, if it's deemed in the House, will be the one that actually becomes law over everything else. So I think you've got to give it to Senator Reid over Waxman.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Sure. McCotter.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. That's a good point. I think that that's a clear victory for the Senator from Nevada. So that brings us over to this side. I'm still trying to peel the back off of the Pelosi sticker. But we do have the last quarter-final games between the President's Chief of Staff, Mr. Emanuel, and, again, the cagey veteran from California, the Speaker of the House, Mrs. Pelosi. Guys?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. McCotter.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I have heard he does in fact have a salty tongue. I think that's right. We'll give that to the Speaker. So we're down to the last quarter-final. It's Waxman versus Reid. Did we solve that?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. So here we are as we come down to championship day. And the championship will be determined on Sunday here in the House of Representatives. It appears that the contest is going to be not with any Republican leader, not with the People, not with the conservative Democrats, not with Mr. Stupak and the people that believe in the pro- life movement. It's going to be between the two Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Mr. Speaker, how much time have we got?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. All right. Here we go. Then in this last 4 minutes I want to yield to each of my friends. And we can't yield specific blocks of time, but if you could each take about 2 minutes to give us your final thoughts and perhaps give us a prediction on the championship. McCotter, you're first.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. I think I agree with it. This is going to be a barn-burner. This is one where you want to be on the edge of your seats because this thing, I expect, is going to go back and forth; first half, second half.