Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield to Mr. Altmire.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, what comes with that is a defense of the current system, and whether it is part of their 1-minute remarks when they come down to the floor or not, for the party who had control of this House for 12 years, who for eight of those years had the White House at their disposal as well, they had plenty of time when they had control of the House, the Senate and the presidency to do something about health care, and they didn't do it. So you combine that inaction along with their opposition to this reform effort and you get a party which is the party now that is defending the existing health care system as it stands today. Listen, we don't govern by polls here, but I think some polls give you a little idea on where the American people are coming down on this fight. All the polls that I have seen that ask this question, if health care reform fails, who will you blame, make it pretty clear that they know that if health care reform falls apart, which I don't think it will, that it will be the Republicans who sent it down. That is not what people want, because they know the status quo doesn't work. They understand that this mythology of competition just isn't for real; that in half the States in this country there is one insurer that controls 50 percent or more of the business, and in three- quarters of the States there are two insurers that control almost two- thirds of the business. If you are a small businessman right now, because you are only bargaining on behalf of a few of your employees, you are paying about 120 percent or more than what some of your bigger competitors are paying. The competition just doesn't work today. So, listen, if you want to talk about what to be scared of, the real thing to be scared of is doing nothing, is allowing for the cost of this system to continue to explode for families and for small businesses to get the short end of the stick when it comes to their inability to bargain with insurance companies. What we really should be scared about is for politics to drive a wedge into the heart of doing what's right for this economy and our families, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join my colleagues on the floor this afternoon to talk about the final stages of our push to complete what has been a very long journey to bring health care to the millions of Americans that don't have it, to lower the cost of care for the millions of small businesses and families that can't afford it, and to start finally doing something about the great burden to taxpayers in this entire economy of the cost of a system that outpaces all of our competitive neighbors across the globe by a two- fold margin. We will hopefully be joined here on the floor by some other Members who are just as interested in reform this afternoon. Let me start out by saying that this really should be a bipartisan issue. Health care reform, which touches individuals no matter whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, whether they are a liberal or a conservative, should be a bipartisan issue. We should be sitting here working together to try to pass reform. Because when it comes down to it, there is, I think, broad bipartisan agreement, both in this House and out in the public, about what the problems are out there. We have too many people that are playing by the rules, doing everything we ask, getting the job, being employed, putting food on their table for their family and their kids but they can't get health care insurance. Five out of six of the uninsured in this country are part of a family that have at least one full-time worker. We agree that it doesn't make sense that there are so many people who are doing everything we ask and simply can't afford to have health care insurance. We also agree that it doesn't make too much sense that doctors have seen a lot of the joy be taken out of the practice of medicine as they spend more and more of their time filling out paperwork, hiring claims managers and fighting with insurance companies. We need to get physicians back to the practice of medicine and get the practice of medicine away from the practice of arguing over reimbursement. We agree that the cost of our current system cannot be sustained, whether it is for an individual business that has seen its health care insurance premiums increase by 120 percent over the past 10 years or whether it is for the employees, the families that make up that small business or that large business who have seen their share of health care insurance costs increase by a similar percentage. We all should agree that the current trajectory of costs for this government is unsustainable as well. The reason that Medicare is on a path towards bankruptcy is not just because you have an enormous amount of individuals, the baby boomer generation, entering Medicare age. It is also because we have constructed a system which pays far too often for volume of care that has nothing to do with quality of care, and we are paying for a lot of medicine out there, billions of dollars worth of medicine, that isn't adding any actual value to the health care that people get. I bet you if we got together a random sample of Republican and Democrat Members of Congress or Republican and Democratic voters or liberal and conservative voters, I bet you there wouldn't be too much disagreement that we as a society and as a government should step up to the plate and do something about the fact that we have got too many people playing by the rules who don't have insurance, that we have too many businesses that are bearing the cost of an unsustainably high system, that we have too many physicians that are spending too much time arguing for reimbursement and not on providing care, and this government is spending too much money on medicine that doesn't add value. The difference, though, comes in our commitment to doing something about the problem. That is where the rubber hits the road. It is one thing to go out into the public as an elected official and say that you understand people's problems, that you feel their pain when it comes to health care. It is another thing to have the courage to come down to this House floor and put your vote and put your advocacy where your mouth is. That is the problem that we have in the House of Representatives right now, that it is only one side of the aisle that is proposing real, sustainable, transformational reform to our health care system which provides answers to those businesses, those families and those taxpayers who know in their hearts that the status quo is unsustainable. It is unfortunately the Republican minority here in the House of Representatives and in the Senate which has decided to be the Party of No, which has decided to stand in the way of health care reform. Now, I want to take my Republican friends at their word. I want to believe them when they say that they are for reform as well. But it has been about 135 days since the Republican leadership announced that they were going to put a plan with real words and text and ideas behind it so that the people out there could compare the proposal for health care reform that has been proposed by President Obama and the proposal put before the American people by the Republican minority. Well, it is 133 days later, over 4 months later since this declaration was made, and we are still waiting. We are still waiting. Now, I don't know why that is. There are some out there that will say that the objective of the Republicans is to stop reform from happening for political reasons; that they think they can do damage to the Speaker or to the Senate President or to the President by stopping health care reform from happening. And those critics look back to the years when President Clinton tried to address this issue, and it was widely understood that then-Minority Leader Gingrich decided that his path to the speakership laid in destroying the President's plans to try to reform our health care system. I hope that is not the case. I hope that our Republican colleagues here are not opposing health care just because they see political gain in it. There are some out there that say that the opponents of health care reform are allied with the status quo, are allied with the insurance companies and drug companies and other industries that may not have an interest in reform. That is certainly the emerging case, that the major health care industries that certainly have a lot to lose from a system that transfers the profits they are making and turns it into help for middle class families are going to try to stop reform from happening. I will say I think a lot of people have been pleasantly surprised that there has not been as much opposition to this debate as maybe one would have expected from the insurance and drug industries. Frankly, I congratulate them on making an honest attempt to be part of this process. But, as we have seen over the last few weeks, those industries are starting to inch away from the table, potentially starting to prepare to bring the full weight of their money and influence down on stopping health care reform. I hope that my Republican colleagues aren't stopping health care reform from happening because of their alliance with some of those industries. But if it is not because they have something to gain politically, if it is not because the Republicans have an alliance with the status quo industries, then we are sort of left at a loss to figure out why, if we agree on the problem, if we agree that something has to be done, why we can't come together on trying to fix it. We are now entering the final stages of this debate, but it is not too late for us to be able to come together here and get behind some common solutions to what is undeniably a common problem. So we are going to continue to come down to this floor and call out our Republican colleagues who seem to be out there saying they are for reform, but when it comes to the actual process of coming up with a bill are nowhere to be found, and when they say they are going to come up with their own bill, leave us waiting for over 4 months to find it. We are going to continue then, in absence of real alternate solutions or cooperation from the Republicans, to press our ideas forward, to talk about how we can bring together this Nation around some basic principles of fairness; that insurance companies shouldn't be able to kick you off your insurance when you get sick; that insurance should actually go back to being insurance so you don't have to be charged 5 times, 10 times as much just because you have cancer; that we should be able to pool together the purchasing power of individuals and small businesses so that they no longer are negotiating with the insurance companies just based on behalf of their one family or their 10 employees; that we can still base reform off of the free market, but we can try to structure the free market in a way to give a little leg up to all the people getting the short end of the stick in the existing market, small businesses and individuals. We can reach out a helping hand to those people that I mentioned at the outset who are playing by the rules, who are doing everything we asked them to do, and help them buy insurance. Not by buying it for them, not by handing them a government-run insurance program, but by helping individuals with tax credits that will partner with their own money to try to buy insurance for themselves and giving them the option to buy into the same type of plan that every Member of Congress, every veteran, every soldier, every Medicare beneficiary has, a government- sponsored health care insurance plan. We are going to talk about those ideas, because those are unifying ideas that bring together businesses, individuals, families and taxpayers, to try to get insurance to people that don't have it, to try to lower the cost of insurance for businesses that are being crippled by our current system, and to try to put back some fairness into the insurance markets for American families. I hope we are in the final stages. I hope it is not too late to get bipartisan cooperation on this. But we can't wait any longer. I am so glad to be joined on the floor by my good friend from Ohio, Mr. Tim Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. If this was easy, Mr. Sarbanes, it would have been done under President Bush. If it was easy, it would have been done under President Clinton. If it was easy, it would have been done under the first President Bush, President Reagan, President Carter. If this was easy, it would have been done already. It's not easy. This is one of the most complicated, convoluted health care systems in the world, which is part of the source of the problem that we find ourselves in today. And so the solution is not one sound bite, the solution isn't 10 pages; the solution is tough to come to. I have faith that the American people are going to get what they've been asking for--as we've mentioned here today--for over 100 years, a system of health care which guarantees that they get coverage not just when they're very sick, but throughout their lives, and gives it to them at a price they can afford. With that, Mr. Speaker, we thank you so much for granting us the time, and we yield back the remaining time.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, we are entering the final stages of crafting a health care bill that gives the American people what they want--more choice in health care options, lower cost for families and small businesses, and insurance that's fair to American families once again. We've worked long days and nights here in Washington to craft a bill that addresses the challenges that people in Connecticut and across this country face. And the American people have been able to read our bills and monitor the debate on television and on the Internet and be able to interact with us when we come back home. Meanwhile, where have our Republican colleagues been? Sitting on the sidelines, talking about solutions, but sharing nothing with the public. And they have kept us waiting for the last 133 days without a bill. Well, it's time for Republicans to get in the game because health care struggles of the American people aren't getting any easier, and they can't afford to wait.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 20th anniversary of the ``Veteran of the Month'' program. I am honored to represent the patriotic citizens of Bantam, Connecticut, home of American Legion Post 44, where the ``Veteran of the Month'' program was founded to honor deceased honorably discharged veterans, soldiers that died while in the service, soldiers that remain missing in action, and special civilian employees of the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or Merchant Marines during World War II. On the first Saturday of the month for the past 240 months, Post 44 conducts a flag raising ceremony in Bantam to celebrate the life and service of a new honoree. The list of honored veterans includes men and women who have served in seven different branches during eleven separate wars. They have all made unique and important contributions to their communities. The ``Veteran of the Month'' program officially began with a flag raising on October 25, 1989. As with many great ideas, this program was born out of necessity. The American flag at the All Wars Memorial in Bantam was damaged, but the delivery of a new flag was delayed. In the meantime, Arthur Shaw offered his late father's burial flag to be flown until the new flag arrived. Post 44 Commander Francis Fabbri gladly accepted the use of the burial flag as a temporary solution until the replacement was received. When word that a burial flag was being flown began to spread around the community, local families of deceased veterans wanted to honor their loved ones by flying their flags as well. Mr. Shaw and Mr. Fabbri recognized that this would represent a fantastic opportunity to pay tribute to soldiers' lives, both during and after their military service. In early 1990, Commander Arthur St. John developed the ceremony format that has been followed ever since. Mr. St. John has worked tirelessly to grow the ``Veteran of the Month'' program into a nationwide effort. It was adopted as an American Legion Americanism Program in 1993 as a model of how to pay tribute to local veterans for their service to our nation. For their efforts, American Legion Post 44 has been awarded the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge's highest honor, the George Washington Honor Medal. In addition, Mr. St. John, Mr. Fabbri, and Mr. Shaw were awarded the Medal of Honor by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. In 2007, Mr. St. John was inducted into the Connecticut American Legion Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class. Last Saturday, as on the 240 Saturdays prior, one flag was retired and another was raised in Bantam. We celebrate and remember the lives of not only the 2 veterans honored at the ceremony, but all those who have participated over the years.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It is capitalism. It is not unbrokered, unfettered capitalism but it is capitalism nonetheless where private health care companies offer the lowest price that they can, and they get business if they offer that lowest price. That doesn't happen today in this marketplace. We are simply changing the rules of the marketplace to give a little better deal to those small businesses and individuals who right now are getting screwed in the marketplace. Now, frankly, I think this isn't a Democratic idea, it is not a liberal idea or a conservative idea or a Republican idea. But for some reason when the Republicans ran this place for 12 years, they didn't come up with it. For some reason, even though they profess to be for the end of the preexisting condition exclusion, they had 12 years and they didn't come up with that idea. Although they profess to be for changing the way that we pay for medicine, as you talked about tonight, so we stop reimbursing just volume for volume sake and start reimbursing for quality health care systems, they had 12 years to implement that, and they didn't do it. So again, I draw issue with a lot of my Republican friends who say we have gone too fast. And I draw issue with my Republican friends who say don't do anything, and I draw issue with some of my Republican friends who have found recent religion on this subject, because they have had a long time to implement some of these reforms, and it has unfortunately taken a change in the leadership of this House and the Senate to get it done.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank you, Mr. Kagen, because there is obviously a tremendous amount of misinformation. I think the reason why there is momentum right now in this country in favor of health care reform is that as we have taken the time over the summer and the fall to confront this misinformation, we have made people understand that there is a difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to health care. A tremendous amount of people who are driving the rhetoric have no interest in connecting that to reality because their agenda is not to really influence the contours of the health care reform bill, their agenda--and I'm talking about some Republicans, but I'm more talking about the folks who are in the entertainment news media--their agenda is to sell air time and to sell commercials and to say outrageous things that get them some attention in the world, and you can do that best by distorting. So it is our job to come down here to the House floor, to go out and stand at town hall meetings, on town greens, in supermarkets--wherever it may be--to talk about the reality here. I caught, as I entered the Chamber, Mr. Kagen, you talking about Medicare. This is such an important piece of this debate. I actually caught some of our Republican colleagues down here earlier with a list of Medicare cuts that are in the bill. Listen, everybody seems to agree on both sides of the aisle that something is wrong with Medicare, right, that we have more money going out than coming in? Medicare is going to go bankrupt someday at the current pace--it's certainly not going to be around for me, and it may not even be around for some people who are becoming current beneficiaries today. So everybody agrees that we've got to do something about it. Well, here's the problem: There are only two things you can do to fix Medicare, you have to start slowing the amount of money that goes out that we pay, or you have to start increasing the amount of money that comes in. Now, the second one isn't very attractive because that's increased payroll taxes, that's more money coming out of people's paychecks--and I'm not sure that a lot of Republicans are for that. So if you're not for more money coming into Medicare, the only way that you save it is by stopping the money from going out. And what this bill does is it slows the rate of Medicare growth, of overall Medicare spending, without cutting or harming benefits for seniors, and in fact improving them. Now people might say, How do you do that? That doesn't sound right. That sounds like political double-speak. How do you cut Medicare costs but maintain Medicare benefits? Well, the problem as you've talked about already this evening is that we have all sorts of medical systems and hospitals and some physicians out there that are billing for all sorts of extra procedures and extra treatments that aren't adding any value. We have a lot of hospitals out there who do a procedure on somebody, send them home before they're ready to go home, and they show up again and again and again and again in the hospital, and we pay them every time that they come back. And then we have a system of reimbursement to drug companies and insurance companies that are paying them 120 percent of the cost of actually providing the service, as we do for our Medicare Advantage plans. So how we have done this is by starting to tailor health care payments--not benefits--health care payments to hospitals and providers and drug companies and insurance companies to promote value, not volume--and you've said this already today, Mr. Kagen--and then we take most of those savings and apply it to the overall health care bill to try to get people coverage that don't have it, but we take some of those savings and make benefits better, as you said, closing the doughnut hole, eliminating all copayments for preventative services, increasing for the first time in the last 6 years the amount of money that doctors get on a routine basis to provide care for patients. So we need to dispel this mythology out there that the Medicare growth restraints in this bill are benefit cuts. They're not. They are payment cuts and payment reductions that are going to save Medicare in the long run. And if Republicans want to come down to this floor and argue against any restraint of growth in Medicare, then if they want Medicare to survive in the long run, Mr. Kagen, they then have to be prepared to argue for more taxes to pay for it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for convening us here on the House floor. I think that transition is important. There are a lot of people back in our districts and people on the Republican side of the aisle who say, You're moving too fast. Slow it down. Why does this have to happen this year? Why don't we wait until next year or why don't we wait until the year after that or maybe 5 years from now or maybe do a little piece now and see how that works and 10 years from now come back and check it out and make a little different adjustment? Your point is exactly right. We've been debating this for 50 years. We have been on a journey to try to make good on our promise as the most affluent and most powerful Nation in the world to the millions of Americans who, through no fault of their own, wake up every day and go to bed every night sick just because they can't afford a doctor, not because they aren't trying to do the right thing and get insurance and health coverage for themselves and their families. We have been talking about this for a very long time. We have been doing a lot of talking. I think you can go back to probably every campaign that's been waged for the last 50, 60 years since this concept was first introduced by Harry Truman. And we are now to a point where we can actually do something about it. Now, this specific proposal that we are debating right now has been debated here in Congress and throughout this country for coming on 12 months now. As many of us hope, we'll get a bill to the President's desk by the end of the year. We will have started this process in January or February of this year with legislative hearings, debated it out in public, debated it in five different committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, in countless, thousands of town hall meetings throughout this country, and we're going to end up with what I think is going to be a pretty sound product. And it's because we took time. It's because we didn't rush it through in the first 100 days of the Obama administration, because this House decided to step back from an original self-imposed deadline of passing it by the August break, because we have stepped back and taken the time to get this right. But our constituents can't wait any longer. I'm always afraid of legislating by anecdote, Mr. Kagen. I mean, we should be legislating here based on facts and data and statistics. But when it comes to whether or not we should pass reform, both the data and the anecdotes are on our side. So we're happy to talk about the real facts that underlie the necessity for change. The fact that this chart plainly illustrates. The fact that health care costs are bankrupting this Nation, comprising 5.2 percent of our economy in 1960 to 2009 when health care costs comprised almost 18 percent of our economy. It's predicted to go up over the next 8 years to 20 percent; $1 in every $5 in this country soon to be spent on health care costs, a cost internalized by every business and manufacturer that's trying to compete and sell products throughout the globe. The facts are on our side when we talk about our need to control health care costs so that it doesn't cripple this economy. When it comes to families in this country who have seen, just over the last 10 years, a 119 percent increase in the premiums that they pay for health care, and the worker contribution that workers specifically make has gone up 117 percent during that same time, a 10-year 119 percent increase in health care costs. The facts are on our side, but so are the anecdotes. This morning, I came down to the House floor, as maybe Mr. Kagen did, because we saw a lineup of dozens of our Republican colleagues to give 1-minute speeches on the House floor. We have the ability on mornings like this to give unlimited amounts of 1-minute speeches on the House floor. And our Republican friends were here to deliver a message: Stop health care reform. Don't let it happen. Don't pass it. We want to preserve, essentially, the status quo. I know some of our friends get up and talk about cross-State purchasing and tort reform, which are laudable goals, but they don't solve the problem. They are working largely around the margins of the root causes of the crisis within our health care system. The message was pretty loud and clear: Stop this health care bill from happening. And the hope, I think, for some people on the Republican side is that by doing that, they can provide a world of hurt to the Democratic President of the United States. So I came down and interrupted that long train of Republican Members saying to stop health care reform by telling a story that I'll share with you, Mr. Kagen, again tonight. At one of the roundtable discussions that I held back in my district, a gentleman who lives in New Britain, Connecticut, came and told a very simple story. He had gotten a job at the Carnival Ice Cream factory in my district, one of the, frankly, success stories of New Britain, Connecticut, a new company which has located several hundred jobs in an old abandoned factory footprint. And he got sick, unfortunately. He was a good worker but he got sick. He got really sick. He got cancer, gallbladder cancer, and that gallbladder cancer caused him to miss enough days of work that he got laid off. He got fired. He's now collecting insurance, unemployment benefits, and he is devoting almost every dime of those checks to pay for health care costs. He has lost his job because of his cancer. He is now having trouble paying for food because of his cancer. He can't wait any longer. And for all of this talk that I hear from conservative talk show hosts and Republican Members of Congress about preserving freedom and defending liberty, what kind of freedom does that guy have? What kind of liberty does he have every day when he wakes up having contracted a potentially life-threatening disease that has taken away from him the ability to make a living and now sucks every dime of out of his pocket to pay for that treatment? What kind of freedom is that? If we really want to talk about preserving freedom and liberty in this country, then let's talk about the ability to wake up every day and know that you are going to be able to get care for yourself and your family when you get sick. That's freedom. And so I reject the notion that this has gone too fast and that we haven't taken our time. And I reject the notion that people out there, like the family you talked about and the gentleman I talked about in my district, can wait any longer for this Congress to wake up and realize that this current system does not work for all of the businesses that are being run into bankruptcy due to the incredible expansion of health care costs, due to the families and small businesses that have had 120 percent escalation in their costs, and the millions of Americans who have gotten sick and lost their jobs because they can't afford health care, Mr. Kagen.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And I would add to that list, Mr. Kagen, some of the other industries that have profited off of the scattering of purchasing power. Pharmaceutical companies have also made a killing off our current policy, really founded initially in the Medicare part D benefit, that refused to centralize purchasing power, thus guaranteeing some pretty generous profits.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. In Connecticut, we have an organization of thousands of small businesses who have joined together to make the push that you are talking about, Mr. Kagen. They have figured out that the status quo doesn't work for them. It is actually run by one gentleman in particular who runs a small company who doesn't provide benefits for his employees because he surveyed the landscape of insurance options he could purchase, and he realized that there was no way he could afford it. For the margins he was making on his maintenance business and for the small number of employees that he had, that offered him no bargaining leverage with the insurance companies. He couldn't buy insurance for his employees and he desperately wanted to. This is a guy who has some tragic personal and family stories with respect to health care concerns, so he knows more than anybody how important it is to have health care insurance and how health care costs can bankrupt you. When he found out that he couldn't afford it and keep the business up and running, he wanted the employees to have a wage to bring home, rather than fire half of them in order to give the remaining half health care, so he started an organization of small businessmen who have bound together in Connecticut. I don't know the latest numbers, but it is in the thousands, and they are pushing for health care reform, both at the State and Federal level. And just to underscore what you have said again, it is a simple concept that when you have five employees and you are negotiating with the insurance company, and an insurance company in many States that has almost no competitors, they can take or leave you. If you don't want to pay their price, there is no reason to give you a lower price because you are only five employees. Even worse, if you are an individual negotiating only on behalf of yourself, you have absolutely no leverage. If you can't pay that insurer's price, they will be happy to move on to the next person who can pay their price. In the 50 percent of the States in this country that have one insurer that controls more than half the market, the balance is even further thrown off. So what we are doing is simple economics. We are saying, instead of Joe and Mary and Sally, and Joe's garage and Mary's factory all negotiating on their own, let's put Joe and Mary and Sally all together into one pool. And let's put all of the rest who are negotiating on their own or negotiating as small businesses together, and then let's make the insurance companies bid to be able to provide insurance to those Joes and Marys and Sallys, and we will let the 10 insurers who give us the best price in, and the others out. All of a sudden they have leverage for the first time ever, and they do it within a marketplace. It is a marketplace that is structured.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think that last point is important, but also important to understand the limitations. Prevention is critical, and there are all sorts of personal choices that we can make and be incentivized to make through the way that our benefit is structured to try to be healthier. But again, I come back to some of the arguments against it. I hear over and over again opponents of health care reform sort of putting the burden on individuals, like it's their fault. There are a lot of people who have gotten sick because of choices they made-- bad eating habits, smoking, unhealthy lifestyles. There are millions of people out there who could have made better choices and avoided getting sick, but there are millions more who got sick through no fault of their own. We have to understand--and I agree, I'm not disagreeing with my friend, but as important as personal responsibility is in health care, it seems to sometimes be the only answer that we hear from the opponents of health care reform, that why should the government get involved in remaking the insurance markets? Why should we get involved in remaking our Medicare bargain? Why don't we just tell people to stop getting sick? Well, you know what, there are some people out there that can make better choices, but there are a lot of other people out there--like the gentleman that I spoke about who contracted gallbladder cancer that have no power over that, and we've got to have a system that answers for those people. I just want to turn it over to our colleague here, because it happened to be as we were starting to talk about the transformation of our health care payment system that one of the champions of that transformation came down to the floor. So I will kick it back to you, and then you can kick it over to Mr. Braley.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It is. You're talking about waste, fraud and abuse. Now fraud, we've got to do a better job of rooting out fraud in Medicare, but no matter how tight you get on fraud, it's never going to get you all the way out of bankruptcy. So you've got to get to the other pieces here, which are waste and abuse. If you ask me, medical procedures performed on me or on my family that don't add any value to my health but do add reimbursements to the doctor and hospital that I go to, that's waste, and we shouldn't be paying for it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, when I was home recently, I spoke to a constituent who had lost his job because he had contracted gall bladder cancer. He was using every dime of his unemployment benefits to pay for the treatment necessary to keep him alive. He is an example of the millions of Americans who have either lost their health care because they got sick and lost their job or the millions more who are just one paycheck or one illness away from losing their own. We have to have an answer for those individuals and for those families. The Republican strategy of stopping health care reform at no cost provides no answer for the people of this country who have been waiting too long for a solution. It's time for this House to get beyond politics and start to provide real answers for the millions of individuals and families like that gentleman, who has his life put at stake by his lack of health care, and come together. Put politics aside and pass health care reform that will lower costs and expand access for the people of this country.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I'm a patient man, so I've been willing to take my Republican colleagues at their word that they're not really trying to obstruct health care reform, that they want to fix the system as well. So I've been willing to wait for a plan. And many people out there in the public have been willing to wait as well for the Republicans to produce a health care reform before they pass judgment on what the best course is to fix our broken health care system. Well, 126 days later, we're tired of waiting. Americans are ready for health care reform now because they want affordable choice that competes with private plans. They know that they are one bad checkup or one pink slip away from being kicked off their coverage. And they can't wait any longer for Republicans to share their solution. Mr. Speaker, the status quo is unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans, except to those who have left us waiting.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for bringing this up, and I would like to really put this in real terms for people. When I went over to Afghanistan and Pakistan with a group of Members of Congress earlier this year, I, frankly, was surprised to find out that the two major funders, the two major governments putting money on the ground in Pakistan, were the United States of America and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has the second largest presence on the ground in Pakistan with regard to the direct government funding of social service infrastructure, of educational infrastructure, and of health infrastructure. If you want a real example of how the money that we are paying in gas prices and in home heating oil prices are directly ending up contravening our national security interests, there is a perfect example. Saudi Arabia is taking the money that it makes off of American consumers of oil, and they are putting that money on the ground in Pakistan to fund the madrasas, the religious schools and many of the efforts that are feeding this growing generation and generations of people who have adverse interests to the United States. They are the recruiting tools of the Taliban and of the al Qaeda funded on the ground in Pakistan by countries that get revenues from the use of their oil. So, as we try to chart a path forward as to how we are going to make sense of the very direct threat presented to this country by al Qaeda's presence and by the Taliban's presence, giving them cover in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, we can't lose sight of the fact that this isn't just about how many troops we have there and what our role is vis-a-vis direct military action or the training of Afghan troops. This is also about the fact that, while we are funding all of those troops, as you have said, Mr. Boccieri, we are also funding at the very same time the efforts that are ongoing in both of those countries to undermine our efforts. There are, frankly, a dozen great reasons that we need to progress towards energy independence, but with direct respect to the security of this country and to the threats presented to it in the Afghanistan- Pakistan region, we have immediate, immediate imperatives to get ourselves off of the oil which is funneling the efforts against us. Mr. Boccieri.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Boccieri, we have the best-educated, most highly trained, most productive, most innovative workforce in the world. You go back over the history of major invention over the last hundred years, almost every single one of them has come out of American ingenuity. Yet today with respect to the global industry that produces advanced battery technology, solar cells, solar technology and wind turbines, in all three of those areas, the United States today has either one or two of the top 10 producers in the world. We have lost ground to Asia, to Europe, because we have been unwilling to be a partner with those industries in getting them off the ground. This place is obsessed with short-term thinking. Maybe it's because everybody in this Chamber is up for reelection every 2 years. But this is a problem. This is an opportunity that requires that vision that Mr. Perriello is talking about, to extend beyond 2 years, to be able to see payoffs that may not happen for 4 years, 5 years, 10 years. But the fact is that this place, Washington, D.C., the United States Congress, has been so focused on the short term, has been so focused on how we get from this year to next year that we have caught ourselves in a cycle, a downward spiral, with regard to energy and economic development policy that we are now so far beyond and behind the rest of the world. This is absolutely about national security, but this is about putting ourselves back on the mantle of leadership with regard to the development of these technologies where we should be today. This is growing jobs in everyone's district, but it does involve some government help at the outset. To simply ask venture capitalists and private investors to put up all of the seed money required to develop these new technologies whose payoff may not come for another 5 or 10 years is unrealistic. And the reason why Japan and Germany and so many other countries are so far out ahead of us with respect to the development of wind turbines and solar panels and advanced battery technology is because they have at the outset partners in government who set market conditions that are hospitable to a public-private partnership in the development of these technologies. This is going to be part of the story of the regrowth and resurgence of the American economy. But it only happens if we follow the example that unfortunately has had to have been set by these other countries, China included, as Mr. Perriello points out. We can get back to a leadership place on this issue, but it is going to take a Congress and a President and a House and a Senate that's willing to look out beyond the 2-year time horizon, that's willing to make some sacrifices and some tough votes right now in order to get us to that point of energy sustainability and independence in the long run.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, my colleagues, yesterday I had the privilege to be in the heart of my district in Waterbury, Connecticut, to meet with a group of seniors, very concerned and active seniors. They call themselves the Silver Waves. And through letters and phone calls and emails and thousands of one-on-one conversations throughout the greater Waterbury area, they have been able to gather over 300 signatures on the petition that I am holding right here expressing why they believe that this Congress has to start paying attention to the very real economic pressures that seniors in this economy and in this country are facing and why, in particular, we need to step up to the plate and do the right thing for seniors who are about to face a zero percent increase on Social Security in this country. Madam Speaker, I'm here to bring these petitions to my colleagues because I couldn't agree with them more. This economic downturn has hit all of us, but it has hit seniors in particular. Just like many Americans, they have mortgages to pay, they've got car payments to make, and they've got grocery bills to pay. But unlike many Americans, they also face disproportionately high health care costs, unusually high prescription-drug costs, and multiple bills that seem only to be rising. Put that together with decreased retirement funds, and seniors are facing a particularly tough forecast. Now over the past year, this Congress has tried to take some steps to pull this economy up from the depths of the recession. We've acted to make sure that our financial system didn't collapse. We've moved quickly to make critical investments in our economy to help it recover. We're working now to try to make this health care system work for both our customers, our patients and also for our economy. But in all of this, we have to remember that seniors throughout this country face economic challenges that are unique only to them, and as we continue to work on getting our entire economy to recover, we have to remember that we have to specifically target seniors, most of which are living on fixed incomes today. Now the impetus behind these petitions is a very real sense from the senior citizens in my district, which I think is reflective of a feeling across this country, that over the past decade or so, they've watched Washington dole out special favors to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the oil companies and to the banks. And they're wondering where the help is for them. And in the middle of this tough economic recession, just when they're waiting for the help to come to them, they get some of the worst news of all, that they will be receiving a zero percent increase in their Social Security check. Now that's why we need to listen to the people who have signed these petitions, because this number is 3,000 in Waterbury, Connecticut, but it would be millions across the country of seniors who want to know why a formula designed to reflect the true cost of living increases for them gives them a zero percent increase when they know that their costs are increasing on a regular basis, and why they can't get Congress to step up to the plate and help them when it seems like over the past decade, a lot of other people with a lot more influence and a lot more power than them have been helped. So I'm here to deliver these petitions and to say ``thank you'' to people like Lucille Keating, Jeannine Laliberte, Lorraine Johnston and Lida Keroski, who put these together, and assure them not only do I agree with the sentiment they and so many Americans have brought to this House, but that I believe we are going to take seriously the notion that in this very difficult economy we need to step up to the plate and do the right thing for seniors in this country.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank my friend from Vermont. He talks about the public option. It gets a lot of attention out there. A lot of rhetoric gets thrown back and forth on the news networks at night, the cable TV shows, and right here about the public option. I think President Obama, in his speech before this Chamber, said it right: this isn't about ideology. A public option isn't about a liberal philosophy versus a conservative philosophy. The public option represents our best chance to start holding private insurers accountable and putting some real downward pressure on premiums. That's what we're all about. I mean, there should be total bipartisan agreement on that basic premise, that health care reform should be about bringing down the cost of premiums for all of our constituents. Now, maybe there are a few people here who are so in bed with the health care industry that they like the fact that patients and consumers are paying through the roof for health care insurance and drugs and devices. But I think for most of us on both sides of the aisle we want to get to lower premiums, and what President Obama said, which I think laid it out pretty clearly, he said, I am for a public option because it's the best chance we have to put some pressure on the private insurers to bring costs down. But he said, If you can find me something else that does that, I am for that too or I'm for that instead. I agree. I'm not for the public option because I think that the government has to have an insurance plan that's available to individuals because that is a baseline of my political ideology. I'm for it because that's the best way to bring down cost. And that's not just me saying that. That's the Congressional Budget Office. The Congressional Budget Office, when analyzing the House and Senate bills, says that having the choice of a public option in that exchange that any small business or individual could choose is a real pressure point as a nonprofit plan that doesn't have to pay marketing costs, advertising costs, big CEO salaries and doesn't have to make a return on its investment. A nonprofit plan will reduce the cost of the bill and reduce the cost to our health care system by $100 billion. The whole bill together every year costs about $100 billion. So the public option alone essentially brings down the cost of the bill by the equivalent of 1 year of health care reform. So I think that if our friends on the Republican side of the aisle want to say ``no'' to the public option, well, that's their right to do so. But I think that they should come to the table with an alternative to try to deliver some cost savings to our constituents. Now, maybe I oversimplify things when I say that this is about reform versus no reform. I'm sure there are people on the other side of the aisle that want to do something. But we have yet to see a reform plan from the Republicans that can prove to us that they're going to be able to lower costs for our constituents. I think once they do that, Mr. Perlmutter, we can have a real debate.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Reclaiming my time, I think we need to get at where the Republicans are coming from here because a lot of them just hate the public option. They hate it because apparently government-run medicine, a government-administered plan, shouldn't be an option for our constituents. They just do not want people out there to have the choice of a publicly sponsored plan. But then when you ask them whether it's still good enough for people that are 65 or older, no, Medicare is fine. We like Medicare. Well, how about is it good enough for our soldiers who are fighting for us overseas? No, it's good enough for our soldiers. What about for our veterans? No, government- sponsored medicine's good enough for our veterans. What about for Members of Congress? Well, yes, I want it for Members of Congress. Well, publicly sponsored insurance is good enough for seniors. It's good enough for veterans. It's good enough for soldiers. It's good enough for public employees, for Members of Congress. All we want is for our constituents to have the ability to decide whether it's good enough for them, too. That's the choice that you're talking about, Mr. Hodes.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Perlmutter, I don't really care. I'm a New York Giants fan. So you can have that bet with somebody else. But I like the fact that you just lump all of us New Englanders all in together that we believe and think the same things. We're diverse, despite what you may think. Mr. Perlmutter, let me back you up on your discussion on what insurance companies are doing now. You're right. Insurance companies are playing by the rules today, and they've got shareholders, they've got investors. In the end, they've got to put a return out there for the people that are investing in their companies. That's why they call the money they spend on health care ``medical loss,'' because to them, as a business, that's a loss. Now, that doesn't mean that these are bad people that are running the business. It doesn't mean that they don't want to keep people healthy. But in the end, every dollar they spend on health care is less money that they can return to their shareholders. So to try to gain a competitive advantage against each other, they engage in these practices, like keeping out people that are sick and charging more for people in their plans when they get sick, rescinding policies when you get sick because you didn't cross your ``T'' or dot your ``I.'' But, frankly, Mr. Perlmutter, a lot of the insurance companies that are part of the health care reform debate don't really have a problem with the rules changing with respect to preexisting conditions and rescission, because as long as they apply to everybody, as long as none of their competitors can get an advantage over the other by excluding sick people or charging more for sick people, then they're okay, as long as everybody's doing the right thing. Frankly, that's why it's bewildering to me that we are still sitting here today having not done this 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And it's why I doubt some of my Republican friends who all of a sudden are for these reforms, because they had 12 years when they controlled the House. They could have done it during any of that time. So I think there are clearly places, as Mr. Welch outlined, where we are going to depart from the insurance companies. They don't want this competition from the public option. They don't want to have that pressure for their costs to come down. But I think there are going to be some places where we can get some agreement here. And my hope is that as we try to get to the finish line, that we set the lines in the sand where we're not going to be able to compromise with the health insurance company, with the drug industry, but we also understand there are going to be some places that we can come together here on, Mr. Hodes.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you. Thank you to Mr. Hodes, Mr. Welch for joining us down here for this hour. Listen, I think we have heard loud and clear from the businesses we represent, from individuals, from doctors, from hospitals: Things need to change. Just take this one last statistic home with you. If we do nothing, if we allow the status quo to continue, within 30 years health care costs will consume almost half of every dollar spent in this country--every dollar that businesses are spending and individuals are spending and the government is spending. That is ruinous for this Nation. That course cannot stand. So I hope that as we debate this over the coming weeks and coming months that we can have some coming together here, we can agree on the bottom lines of health care reform, get coverage to people who don't have it, and lower costs to everybody. And we will shut out the people who scream government takeovers and death panels and all of the rest. All of the people either inside this building or outside this building whose agenda is to either stop health care from happening or to score political points shouldn't have a place at the table. But anyone who wants to have an honest debate about how we make the system work better for people we represent I think should be there. I think that's something we can all come together on. I thank my colleagues for joining us this evening. We will be back as much as we can.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I'm glad to be here on the House floor this evening, joined by many of my colleagues representing the class of 2006, to come down to the floor this evening to talk to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle about an issue that doesn't discriminate between Republicans and Democrats, an issue that doesn't care whether you're liberal or conservative. It is the lack of access to affordable health care in this country. The voters of this Nation gave the House and the Senate and the President a mandate last November. It was to come here and do something that has not been done in the modern history of this government, to finally make fundamental reform of our health care system so that the people that we represent do not go bankrupt by the current system, and the government that we are constituted to protect doesn't go bankrupt because of health care costs. So we're here to talk this evening about what we think is an amazing opportunity for this House and for this country to pass a health care reform bill that, at the same time, expands coverage to people that either don't have health care insurance or today have inadequate health care insurance and, in doing so, reduces the cost of health care for all Americans and all of the countless businesses, small and large, that are struggling to pay for health care costs. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to turn this over to my colleagues to begin the discussion. But before we do, I just want to share one important chart and statistic with my colleagues. This is a chart that simply shows what has happened over the last 10 years to health care costs in this country, a 119 percent increase in the premiums that families and businesses are paying. During that same time, a 117 percent increase in the money coming out of workers' pockets to pay for that health care. A 119, 120 percent increase, let's round it off, in health care costs for businesses around this country. That is unsustainable. And what it has meant is that during that time, any additional money that businesses have made over the last 10 years has largely gone not to workers' pockets, not to increased wages, but to pay health care bills. So we'll talk tonight about a lot of the visible costs of our very broken health care system, the scars on the outside that people have due to our neglect of the problems in our health care system. But there are a lot of invisible costs as well. And what this chart very clearly shows is that when employers, over the last 10 years, are paying 120 percent increases, that means that a lot of workers out there aren't seeing raises, or are only seeing 2 percent when they should be getting 5 percent because their employer is sending all of that money into their insurance plan. And so we're going to talk about that tonight. We're going to frankly also talk about a lot of the mythology that's out there. We had a speaker on the Republican side of the aisle earlier tonight come down here and use the now familiar Republican talking point of the government takeover of health care. Well, I think if any of our constituents out there do what every Member of Congress should do, which is read the bill, they'll find that there is no truth in that statement. That statement, though is anchored in a 28-page memo that made the rounds around the House of Representatives earlier this year by Frank Luntz, a very well known Republican pollster who laid out to Republicans how they could kill health care reform. He said very clearly, don't pay attention to the details. Don't pay attention to the substance. Just say government takeover again and again and again. That memo is strewn with one piece of advice: If you say government takeover, you can stop health care reform from happening. And if you stop health care reform from happening, you can preserve the status quo. That's what's happening here. Talking points and sound bites designed to stop health care reform from happening, designed to stop the reforms that will pass on lower costs to our constituents, that will guarantee access to people that don't have it, that will end these discriminatory practices of insurance companies. That's the agenda that is going to play out on the House floor over the coming weeks and months, an agenda anchored in reform, anchored in cost-cutting, anchored in expanding our access and a political agenda designed to use talking points and sound bites to stop health care reform from happening. I'm glad to be joined here on the House floor by several of my colleagues to talk about the stakes of this debate, to talk about what is really in the bill versus what folks are claiming is in there. And we have some great leaders in this effort joining us tonight, led by my good friend from Colorado, Representative Perlmutter.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I agree, and as I said, I think that's why, on this issue of setting a level playing field amongst insurers, where they're not allowed to keep out people who are sick, where they're also not allowed to price people who get sick at an exorbitantly higher rate than other people, you know, insurers want to be part of that change because it does allow them to get back to trying to be about wellness and about health care rather than trying to be about moderating risk. So I think in this fight we have allies. Now, listen, insurers may not like other parts of this bill. They may not want the public option to put pressure on their rates to come down, but there are a lot of other pieces here that they're partners on. I want to just present one other example of where it's appropriate for the government to come in here and set new rules, and you said it right here. You know, if you don't want the government regulating health care, well, then you've got to dial the clock back about 50 years or so, because the government right now not only is paying about 55 percent of all health care dollars in this country, but we're heavily regulating health care insurance today. It happens mostly at the State level, but every single State has a pretty well staffed insurance department that's regulating health care today. It just doesn't do it very well, in large part because if you're an individual buying health care insurance or you're a small business purchasing on behalf of you and maybe five others, you're getting a pretty raw deal. It's pretty simple economics. You are negotiating on behalf of one or five versus large employers who can either bear the risk themselves and they just self-insure or they have enough employees so that when they're trying to cut a deal with the insurance company they can get a pretty good deal. But for that one guy out there that's just buying an individual policy, he's paying the highest rate. He's paying the highest rates because he's got no purchasing power. So we're just trying to change the rules for him. He would still go out and purchase insurance, but he would be able to purchase insurance in an exchange that this legislation sets up, where he would be joined with everybody else in his State or in his region who is looking for an individual policy, and we would join their forces together and negotiate on their behalf. We'd have insurance companies bid into the exchange to bid to have the right to offer coverage to all of those individuals, and we would leverage the purchasing power of thousands of individuals. Now, health insurance companies would still be regulated, just like they are today, but rather than operating in a market in one State at a time, rather than operating in a market where they are allowed to essentially negotiate with one person and one person and one person, they would now be negotiating with a pool of individuals, which would lower the costs for those people. Just a different way to structure the market. Still a regulated insurance market. It's just a different set of regulations. It's another example of where government, by setting a more fair set of rules for insurance companies and individuals, can lower prices. That's what this legislation is talking about doing; not taking over the health care system, but establishing a different set of rules that benefits our constituents, individuals, and small businesses who have gotten the short end of the stick so far.