Tim Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, did you know that a 25-year-old male in good health can purchase a policy for health insurance for $960 in Kentucky and the same policy costs about $5,800 in New Jersey? Did you know that a policy priced at $1,600 in Iowa is $2,600 in Washington State? And did you know that that same policy costs about $4,000 in Massachusetts? One reason for this disparity is that families have little or no choice when it comes to selecting health care insurance. Where there is no competition, there is very little that drives cost down. Each State has its own health insurance mandates, and some of them are good, but there are about 1,800 of them all across the Nation, including provisions for acupuncturists, massage therapists, and hair replacements. Many of these mandates may be helpful, but when you add up the cost, they can put health care out of the reach of families. Congress should establish a trial program allowing consumers and families to purchase health insurance policies from other States. Let us give families a choice instead of more costs. I urge my colleagues to learn more about competition in health insurance by looking at my Web site at Murphy.house.gov. America needs us to go to work on this.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, first, I thank the distinguished chairman, Chairman Wolf, for his work on this bill. This amendment is intended to highlight the dangerous practice of caller ID fraud or ``call spoofing'' and hope the FCC moves quickly and takes immediate action to protect the public from this. It is a deceptive practice being used to defraud people of their money and deceive citizens into releasing private information. There are now several Web sites where anyone can change their outgoing phone number to any number that they choose on a temporary basis. This practice is not just for harmless pranks but has tremendous identity theft and other security implications. For example, the AARP bulletin recently reported that people received false calls claiming they missed jury duty and were asked for their Social Security numbers. The phone number of the local courthouse had shown up on their caller ID. Criminals have engaged in caller ID fraud to gather private consumer information from businesses that rely on caller ID for authentication, such as financial companies that perform wire transfers. Cell phone voice mailboxes often only require verification that an incoming call is from the user's cell phone number. Lastly, in 2005, SWAT teams surrounded an empty building in New Brunswick, New Jersey, after police received a call from a woman who said she was being held hostage in an apartment. She was not in the apartment, and the woman had intentionally used a false caller ID. False caller ID information can be used to bypass safety systems made to prevent domestic violence and harassment. Imagine what can happen when predators use false caller ID numbers to prey upon children and senior citizens. I might add that these phone spoofing Web sites also offer to disguise the voice of the caller and to record the call. The House has already expressed its will on this matter, unanimously passing H.R. 5126 earlier this month; and I am pleased to be a cosponsor of that bill. I have another bill, H.R. 5304, that would go a step further by amending criminal law to protect Americans from this practice. We cannot keep waiting to deal with this insidious problem and must ask the FCC to move forward quickly. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a courageous hero of the war on terror, Private First Class Steven William Freund. Steven Freund of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, attended Thomas Jefferson High School, and he loved to hunt and fish and do just about anything outdoors. He joined the Marines and served in Iraq for 6 months, already escaping two separate roadside bombs. It was dangerous there, and he knew that, but he strongly believed in and was dedicated to America's mission. But on May 23, Private Freund made the ultimate sacrifice for his mission and the Nation he loved. He was tragically killed by a third roadside bomb while riding in a Humvee conducting combat operations outside Fallujah. Private Freund is survived by his father, Steven Freund, his brother Mark Menzietti, sister Angela Menzietti, cousins Matt Freund, Jason Eiben and Justin Eiben, and his aunt Donna Eiben of Pittsburgh, who was his legal guardian. His funeral was a solemn, but beautiful, service that I attended, along with many friends and family. After the funeral, he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat cluster in a graveside ceremony. Mr. Speaker, I know that I speak for this entire body when I express the deepest condolences to his family on behalf of a grateful Nation. Semper Fi, Private Freund.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, as a psychologist who spent many years working in the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, I was pleased to cosponsor H.R. 5574, the Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2006, and I am pleased to speak on the bill today. The Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program has been of significant help to Children's Hospitals across the country, like Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, whose pediatrics department is also headed by Dr. David Perlmutter. For several years I served on the staff of Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh and remain on the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh as an associate professor of pediatrics; so I have seen firsthand through many years the ongoing value of pediatric education for young physicians where they have so much of their learning that comes not from books but at the bedside. Children's Hospitals provide the world class expertise needed to teach the next generation of medical professionals. Recently, I received a letter from Mr. Roger Oxendale, the president of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, who summarized the importance of the bill by saying, ``The Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program provides the ability to serve all children through clinical care, research, and public health advocacy, as well as its primary purpose of the training of future pediatricians, pediatric specialists, and pediatric research scientists.'' And this bill, he said, ``means a great deal to our hospital and the future of pediatric medicine.'' That support has really echoed throughout our Nation's Children's Hospitals in terms of the service they provide but also what is needed to keep that ongoing medical education going. This payment program provides Federal funds to freestanding Children's Hospitals to support the training of pediatric and other residents in Graduate Medical Education programs. This program compensates for the disparity in the level of Federal funding for teaching hospitals for pediatrics versus other hospitals. So I would urge all of my colleagues to support this vital and necessary legislation to reauthorize the training for pediatric programs for another 5 years and to ensure that America can continue to meet the health care needs of our Nation's children with high quality.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman and chairman, Mr. Deal. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this legislation and to have worked closely with him on this vitally important bill that saves money and lives, and I am pleased to represent Cornerstone Community Center, one of the centers in my district. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5573 is a great step toward meeting our Nation's health care needs. Community health centers are a critically important solution to providing affordable and accessible quality care to millions of Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. Medical care at community health centers is approximately $250 less than the average annual expenditure for office-based doctor visits. And keep in mind that over 30 percent of patients seeking care at a health center are uninsured. That is some 15 million people a year that seek care. Moreover, health center services save money and lives by treating diseases before they become chronic conditions, require hospital care or require a trip to the emergency room. I have with me here a list of the typical procedures that are offered at community health centers: Prenatal care, dental care, mental health care, substance abuse counseling, hearing and vision screening. They also offer discount prescription drugs. They provide vital case management for those with chronic illness, and keep in mind that 80 percent of health care costs go to those with chronic illness. Oftentimes, those complex cases require that sort of case management to help them meet the needs of their cases. They provide smoking cessation classes, blood pressure monitoring, weight reduction programs, and a host of other programs so vital to saving money in health care. It also provides a health care home for many folks, many clinics giving patients a card so they recognize this is a place where they know their doctor and their doctor knows them. By expanding community health centers, Americans could save as much as 30 percent for Medicaid patients, or $17 billion annually, due to reduced specialty care referrals and fewer hospital admissions. However, our Nation's community health centers are experiencing a staffing crisis. A March 2006 publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that community health centers have a 13 percent vacancy rate for family physicians, a 9 percent vacancy rate for interns, 20 percent vacancy for OB-GYNs, and an 8 percent vacancy rate for podiatrists, 22 percent for psychiatrists, and 18 percent for dentists. In other words, although we are trying to meet the needs of the 15 million who use the community health centers, the problem is growing in that not enough doctors are available to provide that care. Vacancies of needed medical personnel at community health centers jeopardizes access to care to the Nation's uninsured and underinsured. Plus, the President has called for more centers around the Nation to fill our needs, and 11,000 more doctors are needed to fill those needs. I have a letter from the National Association of Community Health Centers that says there is a dire shortage of health care providers in underserved communities where health centers are located. Congress and the President have worked to double the capacity of the Federal health centers programs, but in order to ensure that millions of additional patients can be served through this initiative, health centers must also double their workforce by adding 12,000 clinicians and 48,000 administrative staff soon. Many skilled health care providers are willing to volunteer their time and expertise. Volunteer doctors acting as Good Samaritans have proved invaluable to clinics across the Nation. However, many skilled medical volunteers are turned away because community health centers cannot afford to cover their additional medical liability insurance. Over the past year, I have been pleased to work with Chairman Deal, Mr. Bilirakis, and also Chairman Barton to make volunteering at community health centers more practical to doctors in order to meet the needs of families. Community health centers play a key role in any reform-minded approach to improving our health care delivery system. Mr. Speaker, there is a desperate need for doctors and medical personnel of all sorts at community health centers, and I pledge I will continue to work with Chairman Barton and Chairman Deal and other members of the Energy and Commerce Committee and every Member of this body to explore every solution possible to meet our Nation's community health center staffing crisis. We owe this to the patients, to the taxpayers of America who recognize this is a cost-saving, viable measure where we can provide care to millions of Americans who otherwise do not have it. This is the way we should be doing this, through community health centers, centers where the doctors know the patients and the patients know the doctors. Please let us continue to work together to make this care affordable and accessible for patients all around the Nation so they do not have to see dire consequences that come when their conditions get worse because they couldn't receive the care they needed. I thank the chairman for yielding me this time and for our collaboration together.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. After September 11th, Mr. Speaker, bin Laden's deputies said, ``People of America, your government is leading you into a losing battle. Remember, your government was defeated in Vietnam, fled in panic from Lebanon, rushed out of Somalia, and slapped across the face in Aden. Your government today is leading you into a losing war.'' And no wonder. Look at our past. November 1979: 52 Americans taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Iran. We had a failed response. April 1983: 17 Americans killed at our embassy in Beirut. We took no action. October 1983: 241 Marines killed, 100 wounded. Our Marines were redeployed. April 1988: 259 killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. We sought indictments. February 1993: Six killed and a thousand injured after the explosion of the first World Trade Center bombing. We took them to court. October 1993: 18 U.S. servicemen were killed and 84 wounded in Somalia. We withdrew our troops. August 1998: 224 killed at U.S. embassies. We fired cruise missiles in Afghanistan and Sudan. October 2000, 17 U.S. killed and 30 wounded in the USS Cole attack. We took no action. However, since September 11 we have been much different. We fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, and now we are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, and the U.S. is sending a message to the terrorists and the world, and we are different and we will respond. Now, there will be disagreements between leaders who are retired and current ones. This is part of history. Witness the disagreements between Lincoln and McClellan, Patton and Montgomery, MacArthur and Truman. But now we are having success. Our troops are being redeployed outside of the cities of Iraq. We are transferring the battle to Iraqi security forces and their police, and now they have a government where they must face the scourge of al Qaeda, and we cannot let them face it alone. I wish we could finish quickly, but I know we cannot finish hastily. I think one wounded soldier said it to me, summed it up best, he said, I want to go back and finish the job, I want to fight them there, not in our suburbs. I know we cannot fight them in our courts. I know we cannot fight terrorists with our police in our streets. I know surely we cannot fight terrorist murderers with diplomacy. Let's finish the job of terrorism, then we bring them home.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Yes. Is it true that municipalities would still have the authority to negotiate franchises with cable operators under this bill? In other words, they still have the authority to negotiate local franchise agreements.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, and I appreciate your responses and clarifying these issues, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One other question. In addition to retaining rights-of-way management authority, isn't it true that municipalities would still have the authority to negotiate franchises with cable operators under this bill?

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the chairman for this. I have worked with you in the committee to move this bill forward. I know it has a number of things that continue to help local franchising authorities to collect the 5 percent of revenues and also allows some other aspects in there, but I want to get to a colloquy about these two specific issues. Many localities in my district are concerned about their continued management of rights-of-way. In Pennsylvania, such management has been said to include not only the physical, but also the fiscal management of those rights-of-way. Currently, when a cable wire carries multiple services, a Pennsylvania municipality can charge rent based on some formula for the use of rights-of-way. Do you see the bill having an adverse effect on a locality's income by shielding operator revenue in this manner?

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman. Many times on this floor I have heard debate talk about how America has lost some of its manufacturing capacity to other nations, particularly at times with talk about defense issues such as strategic metals. Many people lament that if we have lost that capacity at times of problems or national security, national defense issues, where will we get it from? We have to depend upon other countries to import that. Well, we indeed are in the same situation now with our petroleum products that are refined. We import 2 million barrels a day from other countries, from Western Europe, from Saudi Arabia, from Venezuela, from some countries that are more volatile politically than others. The same thing occurs when we are importing other crude oil from other countries, and we recognize the importance of not having to depend upon other countries that one day may be a political friend, and the next day may do such things as say we are cutting off the oil unless you let us have nuclear weapons. Here we are in that same situation when it comes to oil refineries. It takes about eight to 10 years to go through the permitting process for an oil refinery, a preposterous amount of time, but it is important that all permits and all environmental needs are met. This bill does not gut any of those. As a matter of fact, what it does is it appoints someone to coordinate and make sure that that process continues on and there are no delays. Once a permitting takes place, it takes an additional 2 to 3 years to construct the plant. So, if we were to pass this today and the Senate were to pass it and the President were to sign this, it would be perhaps another 10 years, a decade, before products started to flow out of there. We simply cannot delay this anymore. It increases the demand, it reduces the supply, and I believe if the law of supply and demand is telling us anything right now, America is demanding that lawmakers increase the supply. We know that studies have been done telling us that price gouging is not the issue. It is a matter of having adequate supplies of petroleum and petroleum products. So, while we are working on conservation, while we are working on getting hybrid fuel cell vehicles, we need to pass this bill so we can get more of the supply here and reduce the cost.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this landmark mine safety legislation, S. 2803. Mine safety has been on all our minds this year, as Americans mourned the heartbreaking disasters at the Aracoma Alma and Sago mines in West Virginia in January. Thus, throughout the process of crafting this bill, all parties have wanted the end product to strongly improve safety for miners. In my district in southwestern Pennsylvania, the mining industry has been a central part of the way of life for a century and a half. My great-grandfather was a coal miner, who worked in Pennsylvania mines when carts were pulled by mules and mines were lit by candles. Mining was very dangerous work then. The mining industry has certainly made remarkable strides ever since. Today is another great step forward for miners in Pennsylvania and across the Nation; therefore, I am pleased to support S. 2803. On March 16, as mine safety legislation was being crafted, I was pleased to testify on the subject of mine safety before the Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. On that day, I expressed many concerns about current mine conditions. For instance, I cited my concern about whether miners are sufficiently employing technology to communicate with one another, especially when accidents occur. S. 2803 requires that all mines provide immediate notification of accidents and regularly update their emergency response plans. At the hearing, I also raised my discomfort with the use of ``belt air,'' which can be unhealthy to breathe and even flammable. Accordingly, the bill before us prohibits the use of conveyor belts to ventilate work areas. While recent tragedies have dominated the mining industry news of late, I hope we recount the success stories of the mining industry alongside some of the failures. For instance, CONSOL Energy, based in my district, sent their own rescue teams to the Sago mine in January. The CONSOL rescue teams arrived first at the scene, and they have worked tirelessly on many other occasions to help miners throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia, regardless of who owns the mine. They are a success story I am pleased to highlight, of which we should all be proud. The coal industry has helped fuel this Nation for 150 years, and coal can be used to heat our homes, power our economy, and protect our Nation for at least another 150 years if we continue to use it. We all grieved the tragic accidents in West Virginia in January. This bill will help prevent such accidents in the future.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, a couple weeks ago, I provided for Members of Congress this document: ``Critical Condition: The State of the Union's Health Care, 2006,'' put out by my office. In that we outlined many programs that would help reduce costs of health care in America. Let me expand on one of them about Community Health Centers, which are nonprofit centers to provide primary and preventative care for folks who are low income or who are uninsured and underinsured. However, a recent report by the Journal of the American Medical Association said that although these clinics are of tremendous value, there is a shortage of medical personnel at them. A study published by Dr. Roger Rosenblatt of the University of Washington says that there is a 13 percent shortage of family physicians, a 20 percent shortage of obstetricians, and a 22.5 percent shortage of psychiatrists for these positions. Oddly enough, if a physician is employed by a Community Health Center, they are covered by the Federal liability, but if someone wants to volunteer at a clinic, they are not. It is important that we provide mechanisms to allow physicians and other medical personnel to volunteer at these clinics. America needs that. The uninsured and underinsured need that, and, quite frankly, it would save a tremendous amount of money. People can receive further information on my Web site, murphy.house.gov.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, this is about American jobs, the American family and the American economy. Here are the plain facts. Natural gas costs less than a $1.50 per Btu in Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, but here in the United States this one report had it at $8.85, and it has been as high as $13. This means homeowners pay about $200 more to heat their homes. This means the United States steel, for every dollar the price of natural gas goes up, costs them $80 million. If you are a company and you ask yourself where are you going to build or where are you going to move to, we have already lost 90,000 jobs in the chemical industry. We have lost 3 million jobs in the manufacturing industry due to energy prices. We talk about the law of supply and demand of the 1990s. Ninety percent of new electric energy plants use natural gas. World demands have gone up. It is expected about a 90 percent increase in natural gas demands in the next 10 years, but since 1982 this Nation had a self- imposed moratorium on offshore natural gas and oil drilling. Here is the real law of supply and demand we need to look at now. Americans are demanding that lawmakers increase the supply. We cannot afford to continue to have these high gas prices and send jobs to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Iran and Russia or let other countries do with natural gas prices like they did with Ukraine and double the prices on them. We cannot compete as a nation for jobs with this. It is no wonder the building trades have come out with a very strongly worded letter and said, please, let us start lowering the prices for goods and services in America. People get up here time and time again and say China is eating us for lunch. What are we doing here? We are cutting our own legs off and destroying jobs in America. We have abundant supplies of natural gas. We can protect the coastline. This will not be within 3 miles. It takes entirely different legislation to do that, but please, please, let us save jobs in America for a change and stop talking about it.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained prior to rollcall 137 this morning and was not able to vote. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall 137.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was unable to be present for the following rollcall votes today due to a death in the family. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 5143, ``yea'' on House Resolution 805, and ``yea'' on House Resolution 806.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was unable to be present for today's rollcall votes due to a death in the family. Had I been present, let the Record reflect that I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 1499, ``yea'' on H.R. 5037, and ``yea'' on H.R. 3829.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time and your continued leadership in helping this Nation understand the importance of the Medicare prescription drug plan. I wanted to echo with you the issues involved with this, which are so important not only to our constituents but actually to people across the Nation as they look at this and reflect back a couple of years ago when many folks were traveling to Canada, looking at trying to import some medications from around the world in an attempt to save money. The net result of that, the overall savings that came from importing medications from Canada as opposed to price shopping in America, was not that dramatic. And compared to our generic medications, generics still saved a lot more money. But nonetheless, many folks were searching for ways to find less expensive medications. Secondly, when people were involved in importing drugs from around the world, from Web sites or mail order, what they found many times were counterfeit medications. In one case they were supposed to be a prescription medication, but they were white pills that said the word ``aspirin.'' It is not hard to guess what those were. In other situations they were completely counterfeited by using paint and other materials to try and make the pills mimic professionally manufactured medications. In other words, people were attempting to save money, and spent more after paying for counterfeit medications. So along came the prescription drug plan, and people reported to me they did find savings. Some looked at their VA program and were happy with that. In Pennsylvania, we have what is called the PACE program, or the Prescription Assistance Contract for the Elderly. Many were happy with that, and that is fine. Others said as they looked at their Medicare benefits, they found significant savings. One woman, as she was looking through that, told me she was saving hundreds of dollars. The point is it was voluntary. People compared different plans and found what saved money for them. The main thing is getting people on the medication that they need, rather than trying to seek some discount plan that really does not save them money. Of course, there are other parts of this Medicare bill that we recognize. One is getting people their checkup with their doctor so someone can review their needs; and also having pharmacists review the medications people take to make sure that we are avoiding duplication and improper doses, which also add costs. We have to remember one of the ways to reduce the cost of medicine is not just look at discounts and ways the government can help supplement payments, but also patients need to make sure that they are taking only the drugs they need. When people see multiple doctors and go to multiple pharmacists, that is one of the huge risks that occur for senior citizens where they end up with medical problems. One study read, and I think the CDC sponsored this, it said in Medicare alone, taking the wrong doses for the wrong person has contributed to some $29 billion in costs that were avoidable. So it is important to have all medications coordinated under one plan rather than going to multiple doctors and multiple pharmacists. But not only is it important for us to look at this program to provide medications that are affordable, but it is also important for us to note when people look at the cost of the prescription drug program for Medicare, what they consistently fail to take into account is what money it saves for health care overall. I am going to read a couple of points about some medications, and I recognize, although I work in the field of psychology, some of these are areas of expertise for some of the other physicians here on the floor. Some comments I will make, and Dr. Gingrey has commented on this too, that taking the correct medication is a money-saving as well as a life-saving factor that unfortunately the Congressional Budget Office and others who have looked at the cost of the Medicare prescription drug never take into account. Here is one point dealing with heart disease. Patients with heart failure who are treated with beta-blockers live longer, and treatment costs are about $4,000 lower than patients who do not take these medications. A January 2004 study by Duke researchers found that beta- blocker therapy improves clinical outcomes of heart failure patients and is cost saving to society and Medicare. Looking more broadly, the researchers found that 5 years of treatment for heart failure without beta-blockers cost a total of $53,000. But with beta-blockers, treatment cost fell by $4,000, and patient survival increased by an average of 3\1/2\ months. Here is a study on depression. New medicines have brought down the cost of treating depression in the 1990s by reducing the need for hospitalization. Medications like Prozac and Paxil are responsible for this. New studies show how newer, better medicines reduce the cost of treating patients with depression. The cost of treating a depressed person fell throughout the 1990s, largely because of a switch from hospitalization to medication and psychotherapy, one study said. A study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in December 2003 found that per-patient spending on depression actually fell by nearly 20 percent over the course of the 1990s. A study on diabetes indicated that medicines that control diabetes help prevent serious complications, reducing the cost of care by about $747 per patient every year. New diabetes medicines are helping patients avoid serious complications and death, and can reduce overall health care spending. One recent study found that effective treatment of diabetes with medicines and other therapy yields annual health care savings of $700 to $950 per patient within 1 to 2 years. Another study corroborated these results, finding that the use of a disease management program to control diabetes, along with medication and patient education, generated savings of $747 per patient per year. I might add that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found when they engage these disease management programs, they reduced hospitalizations by some 75 percent. Let me mention Alzheimer's disease. One Alzheimer's medicine was found to reduce spending on skilled nursing facilities and hospital stays. A study of the effects on costs in a Medicare managed care plan showed that, although the prescription cost for the group receiving the drug were over $1,000 higher per patient, the overall medical costs fell to $8,000 compared with $11,947 for the group not receiving drug treatment. This one-third savings was as a result of reduced costs in other areas such as hospital and skilled nursing facilities. So one of the things that is so important for citizens to take into account as they look at these programs is to please understand not only the cost savings the program has overall, but the more that patients get engaged in following the prescriptions, following the doctor's orders, not only for the medicines themselves but patient education, diet, other therapies that may be recommended, the overall cost of health care goes down. And that is one of the untold stories of how the prescription drug plan works. It saves lives and saves money. Overall, if Congress continues to pay attention to the bigger picture of how using electronic medical records and electronic prescribing, patient management profiles, to use integrated care of looking at psychiatric care coordinated with medical care, to look at some of these many areas, we will continue to see, I believe, massive savings in health care, which is what we want to do. We want to coordinate all of these efforts in health care so it is not just a matter of saying health care is too expensive, so let us increase copays or deductibles or premiums or reduce coverage. None of those are viable alternatives. Nor is a method used to reduce payments to doctors or hospitals. That is shifting the cost of care, that is not improving care. And this Medicare prescription drug plan which coordinates those benefits so much better for patients is a very important aspect that we encourage people to take a look at. I commend Dr. Gingrey for his work on maintaining this important issue and bringing it before the American public to review and understand. I am sure you agree that the issue of the medication, when we only look at the cost up front and not look at the cost of what it saves, we are missing the point. That involves a lot of foresight by those who drafted this legislation to make sure there was coordination of medical treatment and that it was put into this bill.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam Speaker, I rise with a somber mood to recognize a citizen, a patriot, a soldier who gave his life for a cause he believed in serving his country as a soldier in Iraq. Mark Melcher lived in Pittsburgh his entire life. He grew up on the north side watching the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins play, and graduated the from North Catholic High School in 1989. Soon afterwards, he joined the Army. He served in Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. Following the 1991 conflict to liberate Kuwait, Mark returned home to begin working at the Mellon Financial Corporation. He then served in the National Guard's lst Battalion, 103rd Armored Division located in Friedens, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Mark departed for military training on the morning of Sunday, February 5th. Sadly, on April 15, 2006, just a month after arriving in theater, Mark was killed when his tank he manned came under fire outside of Baghdad. He was 34 years old. He is survived by his parents, Kathy and John Melcher, Sr., of Ross, Pennsylvania. I commend the deepest sympathies of all Members of this House to the Melcher family. Also I offer the gratitude of every American. We should never forget his devotion of duty, his love of country. Today and every day let us give thanks to Mark Melcher, his family, and indeed all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and the marines. John Melcher, Sr., Mark's father, said of Mark, my son believed in the cause, he loved his country, gave his life for his country. You don't get any better than that. Yes, sir, Mr. Melcher, you do not get any better than that.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the distinguished doctor from Georgia for yielding to me and for your important information for our colleagues and really for our Nation to understand the importance of the Medicare prescription drug plan. Some of the things said will bear repeating several times over the next few weeks, and one of the points I want to talk about, as you have discussed as well, is misinformation that is sent out about this plan. Any time something is new, there is going to be some glitches. All of us, when our children were new, well, we knew as parents we didn't exactly know everything we were doing and we had a foul-up or two, but we persevered and our children turned out well. No matter what one does in life, when it is something new in learning the ropes of it, it is going to take a little adjustment. But as we were signing up 27 million seniors at a rate sometimes approaching 400,000 a week, the system wasn't always perfectly ready for all of them, and there were some glitches, particularly for some folks who were dual eligible. But the point is HHS or Medicare responded, put extra people on board, worked out some of the glitches, and I am pleased to say that many of the seniors that I talked to are very pleased with this program. As a matter of fact, I was recently giving a town hall meeting, there must have been 200 people in the audience there, and I asked how many of them have yet to sign up for a Medicare plan? Not a single hand went up. It seems that all of them had looked at the plan at that point, and that Pennsylvania had chosen a number of things. One gentleman decided to stick with the veterans plan. He liked that. He had served in the military for many years now as a veteran. Another woman was pleased that she could maintain the Pennsylvania PACE plan for low income seniors that worked well for her. Another woman said she was actually saving several hundred dollars so far, and it was only March, with the Medicare prescription drug plan. It is folks like this who really tell the truth about what is going on. While politicians may be out there trying to scare seniors, it is the seniors themselves that are perhaps the best salesmen saying it is valuable. It was only a short period ago that the stories that were always in the newspapers were of seniors getting on board busses and going off to Canada to pick up their prescription drugs, or perhaps using mail order systems to try to pick up prescription drugs. But I want to point out a couple of things that is important that. One, a study of the overall costs of traveling off to Canada, it turns out that the overall cost savings was probably only around 1 percent when you looked at it. But AARP and others have said that actually the savings that comes from the Medicare prescription drug plan are at least equal to and sometimes better than traveling across the Nation's lines to pick up drugs. Also a very, very important savings factor here is not just a matter of saving money, but saving lives. And in the process of seniors trying to find drugs that are affordable to them, Mr. Speaker, what they are also doing is getting on the Internet or going through mail order houses and trying to pick up prescription drugs from foreign sources and tragically finding that those sources contain counterfeit drugs. One, a drug used to treat schizophrenia, it turned out to be nothing more than white pills that said the word aspirin on them. Other medications had water in them that was tainted. Other ones may have had paint or foreign substances in them. The point is, not only were they sometimes toxic in and of themselves, but in not treating the illness, the things that went with that is sometimes having seniors take medications that they could have been allergic to or take medications that certainly, at the very least, were not treating their illness. By having an affordable prescription drug plan, what we have instead is getting the right medicines to the right people so that they are taking medications that are valuable to them and can help treat their illnesses. But let me point out some more things we have to understand, because as people also look at the expense of a prescription drug plan, we have to understand that, unfortunately, the way this system works in this Federal Government, the Congressional Budget Office doesn't ever tell us how much we save. But take a listen at a couple of these points. First of all, ulcer surgery has become a relic of the past. New drugs, Nexium, Prilosec, other things we have seen advertised, really have ended up treating ulcers so well that surgical procedures to correct ulcers has fallen, and today it is really a thing of the past. Medicines also reduce hospitalizations and surgery for heart disease. Drugs that reduce, for example, cholesterol levels and other things that in the past had been an automatic admission to a hospital and bypass surgery and angioplasty now we find are going down. Medications to treat Alzheimer's diseases. Medications that have also worked out there to improve the cognitive functioning over time and keeping people out of long-term care and nursing care longer. Also, listen to this, overall new medicines play a significant role in the life expectancy gains made in the U.S. and around the world. Recent research published in the Journal of Health Affairs concludes that new medicines generated 40 percent of the 2-year gain in life expectancy achieved in 52 countries between 1986 and 2000. In other words, we are not only providing medications that are affordable, but medications are now there that providing better and longer life for many seniors. The list goes on with so many more, cancer drugs, drugs to treat AIDS, HIV, drugs that prevent stroke, that improve quality of life of children. There is a wide range. But the main thing is before the Medicaid prescription drug plan came into effect, so many seniors, well, it was much like window shopping. You could look in the shop and admire the merchandise, but you couldn't go in to get it. Now that has changed. And that is a message that we need to be telling across America as we are doing tonight and our colleagues are going to do during this break. It is of no value, as a matter of fact, it is a negative value and of questionable ethical value I think sometimes if people only spend their time criticizing the glitches that have been in the program, as with any program that occurs, whether it is a public or private program, criticizing it, standing on the outside and frightening seniors, frightening seniors into thinking that because there was complexities and difficulties, therefore they should not sign up. I worry about this, Mr. Speaker. I worry because when I have held town meetings and I have heard seniors say ``I heard this is difficult; I don't think I can understand it so I have been holding off doing it,'' my worry in those circumstances, when the people are just playing politics with patients and frightening seniors away from this program, what happens if a senior needed medication and they did not get it because someone frightened them away? The point is, if one dials 1-800-Medicare, they can talk to someone who is helpful. If they go on to web sites, Medicare.gov, they can get the information that they need. They can sit down with a family member or friends. And many drugstores, many pharmacists throughout the Nation will provide the kind of consultation free of charge to help seniors walk through this. But they need their name, address, their Social Security number, the names of the drugs they are on, the dosage levels they take, the prices they pay. And don't just compare what it is today when you have the deductibles and copays. Look at what happens to the long-term costs throughout the year and look at those prices and determine which of the many plans available are the best ones for you. That is the message we should be telling seniors. You know, so often in America we criticize that costs go up when people do not have a choice. Here with Medicare, people do have a choice. They have a choice of looking through many, several plans. They have a choice of doing nothing at all, quite frankly. But it is something that is available to seniors. And the main thing about this is having the availability of medications which can be lifesaving and life extending and help the quality of life, make the difference between someone who may be bound up in a nursing home and someone who is still at their home, those are the kinds of stories that Americans need to be talking about. While there are those criticizing frightening seniors, let's remember this. Instead of frightening seniors, we should be thinking this: 27 million seniors have signed up for this program so far, and many more will sign up in the next few weeks. Those 27 million seniors can't all be wrong. And instead of politicians mocking them and mocking the program, maybe, just maybe, we would all do better to link our arms and say let's do what we can to help every senior get the medications they need. And even if they don't need them now, to sign up for a program, just like you don't need homeowner's insurance today if your house isn't on fire, you don't need automobile insurance today if you haven't had an accident, but you have it there in case you do. Sometimes with low costs in Pennsylvania, I know it can be as little as $10 a month. Someone can at least have the piece of mind of knowing it is there when they need it. These are the things we need, Mr. Chairman. And to my colleague, Dr. Gingrey, I am so pleased that you have done so much to help seniors throughout the Nation know this and help our colleagues know this. There is the deadline coming up next month for seniors to sign up, and it is good news that so many seniors are looking towards that deadline to sign up. Some have waited a little bit and want to see some glitches out of the program. Many of those are being addressed now. I certainly congratulate the Secretary of Health and Human Services for all of the work he has been doing to get this message out. But we are not done, and as colleagues we need to be working together for the sake of our patients. Let's stop playing political games and really do what is right and decent and honorable for America's seniors. I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank you so much for sharing the time.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 744, which honors the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 for being what I believe is, as the resolution states, ``the blueprint for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.'' Next Monday, April 10, 2006 will mark the 8th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which has helped to bring nearly a decade of peace to Northern Ireland. As a result of the historic Good Friday Agreement, there is perhaps a greater potential for lasting peace in Northern Ireland now than perhaps ever, since the establishment of the Irish Republic. The Good Friday Agreement has outlined a plan for peace and reconciliation in the 21st century. I believe the most significant result of the Good Friday Agreement was the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly, a devolved government body that has facilitated important debate between the political parties. Consequently, problems have been directly and civilly addressed through free and open debate. Unfortunately, as my colleagues know, due to disagreements between the political parties--the Social Democrat and Labor Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and Sinn Fein--the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since October of 2002. Ever since, the British government has taken direct control over the government to ensure stability. I would hope all sides can agree to terms in order to allow the Assembly to be reestablished. Madam Speaker, I have met with the leaders of Sinn Fein, the DUP, the UUP and the SDLP, both here in the U.S. and in Ireland. All parties have conveyed to me that they agree it is vital for the future security of the North that new elections be held, an Executive put in place, and the legislative assembly reconvened. I agree with this view, and express the support of the U.S. House of Representatives to facilitate the peace process. I thank the distinguished Chairman of the International Relations Committee, Mr. Hyde, for authoring this resolution.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, according to the Centers for Disease Control, every 6 minutes someone in this country dies from an infection they picked up in a hospital. That is 90,000 people and a total cost of $50 billion. Yet when hospitals adhere to patient safety measures, they can dramatically reduce these infections. A hospital in Oklahoma performed 400 surgeries without an infection. A hospital in Pittsburgh reduced these infections greatly and saved millions of dollars. A hospital in St. Louis received savings of $1.5 million. I am pleased that the Energy and Commerce Committee will take up this issue and hold hearings on this in a couple of weeks. We need to take action and save lives. At this time when we get so concerned about so many issues in America, is it not time that Congress tackled these issues head-on and worked out such issues as pay-for-performance incentives through Medicare and Medicaid to greatly reduce infections and save thousands of lives? To learn more on this, people can look at my Web site at murphy.house.gov.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I will be joined in a little bit by my friend and my colleague, Dr. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, for this next hour. It is important that we lay out a large segment of what we believe is a critically important agenda to reform health care in America. We know that few things are more valuable to us than the health of our families. When the health of our families is threatened, we feel frightened, we feel vulnerable, and we desperately search for help. I think few would challenge that the United States provides, as available, the best health care in the world, dedicated and caring physicians and nurses and hospitals and professionals, and we have made huge technological advances in fighting disease and prolonging life. Our research and medical technology is second to none. It significantly advances every year. However, despite these many accomplishments, the American health care system is burdened by severe problems that lower quality and increase costs and too often make this system unaffordable and inaccessible for millions of Americans. Too many families, unfortunately, are only able to window-shop for health care coverage, and they feel as though they cannot go into the store. Tonight, those colleagues of ours on our side of the aisle, who are part of our health care team, will be talking about a number of important issues to advance this cause. Mr. Speaker, before I go into this, let me pause, if I may, for a moment, and say usually when I have been here for Special Orders to talk about issues, I traditionally was walking up to the Capitol to make a call to my mother to let her know. She then would get on the phones and call all her friends. My mother was a nurse, worked for many years at hospitals in Cleveland, as well as in industrial settings. I am sad to say that since I last spoke in the Chamber, my mother had died, but I am sure she is still doing her own method of notifying her friends, and meeting my father now to talk to him and to say, make sure you pay attention to this message. It is a message that I hope Americans will attend to as well. Because while there are those who talk about the costs of health care, what we are going to be talking about tonight is ways of changing health care and not simply shifting the burden of health care to one or the other. Let me talk about a few of the costs that we need to pay attention to. Health care costs are skyrocketing. In 2005, the Federal Government spent over 45 percent of mandatory spending on health care programs, including almost $300 billion for Medicare and $181 billion for Medicaid. Medicaid costs now consume about 70 percent of States' budgets, and it is rising more than the rate of inflation. This, nearly half a trillion dollars, does not even include the billions that we spend at the Federal level in discretionary health care spending for Department of Veterans Affairs, $31 billion; the National Institutes of Health, which has increased over 100 percent in the last 10 years under President Bush, to $28.5 billion; the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, $8.2 billion; the Indian Health Services, $4 billion; Early Head Start, $6.8 billion; and the Women, Infants and Children program, $5.3 billion. When we add to this also the costs paid for by employers and paid for by families across the Nation, the numbers are staggering. The Federal Government has made a number of attempts over the years to deal with some of these increased costs, such things as dealing with the budget, where we try and increase copayments on prescription drugs, or we deal with premium costs in private or federally or State-funded health care programs, which have all been geared towards trying to share the costs. This higher cost-sharing requirement, in many cases, is designed to not only reduce some of the overall costs to the Federal budget, but also to help encourage patients to change some behaviors, such as not going to expensive emergency room settings for common ailments, such as colds and flu and scrapes and bumps, but instead to see their doctor. These increased copays are usually enacted to change these behaviors, and yet we need to be doing other things in order to actually change some of the flaws in our health care system. But let us make a point of this: whenever Congress has enacted those important issues to try and change some behaviors and actually save money, unfortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which is there to tell us how much we are spending and give us some accurate numbers, simply is unable to do this at all. The Congressional Budget Office can only talk about savings when more money comes out of pocket, but they cannot and are unable to talk about savings that come from trying to prevent the problems we are talking about tonight. Since the CBO does not provide what is called dynamic scoring, a potential cost savings, the Federal Government in essence ties its own hands so we can only focus on cost sharing and not directly change efficiency and reduce errors in health care. We do not deal with the biggest drivers of these costs. We did not have a way here to look at this. Let me give you an example. If we were to ask the Congressional Budget Office how much it costs to immunize children in America or to inoculate them with several important inoculations that they receive in their infancy and young childhood, the CBO could give us that number. But ask them what this saves, what this saves in reduced hospital visits and the other medical complications, and they simply are not able to tell you. Ask the Federal Government CBO what treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse save, and they cannot tell you. Ask them what Early Head Start's medical programs save when we get children to the doctor early. They cannot tell you. Ask also what would happen if we made our medical records system more efficient and eliminated many of the costly errors in the system. They cannot tell you. The CBO can tell us that, in the Deficit Reduction Act passed by the House, that $150 million was placed in there, through efforts of my office and others, in order to help hospitals in high Medicaid areas use electronic medical records in order to reduce costs. But, unfortunately, the CBO cannot tell us what those costs are. I am going to be talking a little bit more about these costs, but first I would like to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Phil Gingrey, to lay out some general outlines of some other things we are going to be talking about tonight. Dr. Gingrey, a friend and colleague, who we often are on the floor together talking on these health care aspects, will lay out in general some of the things we will be talking about. As I said, I opened up naming some of the huge cost increases in health care, but Dr. Gingrey will lay out the general plan of where we need to go to make some substantive reforms in the health care system so that we are no longer talking about cost shifting, but really talking about saving money, and, more importantly, saving lives. I yield to Dr. Gingrey.