John Shadegg

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Just to interrupt for one quick second. That's what we call defensive medicine, which means a doctor defending himself in advance or practicing defensive medicine because he is afraid he's going to get sued and has to be able to respond to that suit.

Mr. SHADEGG. It is clear that tort reform should be a part of this legislation, but of course it is not. I have tried to outline here, I told you that I had many, many kinds of special deals, backroom deals, behind the scenes deals--``change you can believe in'' if you will--that I wanted to go through during this hour. I think we've been through five of them so far. You just mentioned Blue Cross Blue Shield. It turns out that Blue Cross Blue Shield does pretty well in this legislation because section 10905, if you want to look at it, of the Senate bill, the bill we will vote on here on the floor next week or the week after, without changing a comma has a special deal in it that exempts Blue Cross Blue Shield, but only Blue Cross Blue Shield of two States. It turns out it exempts Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan from having to pay a particular fee that will be imposed on all other insurance companies. Interestingly, Senator Ben Nelson represents Nebraska; Senator Debbie Stabenow represents Michigan. And, again, the source of this story, another news story, Boston Globe, December 22, 2009, title of the article, ``Concessions Lawmakers Won in the Health Care Bill.'' These Senators won a lot of concessions. Blue Cross Blue Shield of, I guess, Nebraska and Michigan are happy. Let's talk about the next one. It turns out that, according to the New York Times--so we've got lots of sources, we've got the Wall Street Journal, we've got the Boston Globe, we've got Politico, we've got the New York Times--this one is the New York Times, December 20, 2009, ``Deep in Health Bill,'' is the title of the article. Very specific beneficiaries. It turns out that coal miners in Libby, Montana, in section 10323, get several billion dollars' worth of free coverage as a result of, according to the article, Senator Max Baucus of Montana. Yet I thought maybe that is a part of the change we can believe in when only powerful Senators are able to get the deals and not powerful House Members. The third one that I thought I'd bring up in this particular segment goes back to Florida. I think this has actually been called the ``Gator Aid.'' Then this particular one appeared in an ABC News blog on February 22 of this year, 2010, which reads, ``White House Cuts Special Help for Nebraska, but Other Deals Remain in Reform Bill.'' It points out the provision that Senator Bill Nelson was able to negotiate in not cutting Medicare Advantage in Florida. Now, mind you, Medicare Advantage is very important to the elderly. In Arizona, in my State, which is a big retirement State, I have lots of constituents on Medicare Advantage. If I could have cut this deal, you know, maybe I wouldn't have been complaining, but that's not the way the system works. I wasn't a Senator, and I didn't get to cut this deal, but Ben Nelson did. It says that the Medicare Advantage cuts that will occur in Tennessee or in Arizona won't occur in Florida, courtesy of Senator Ben Nelson. So I guess we have the most ethical and the change we can believe in except when we don't have the most ethical and the change we can believe in.

Mr. SHADEGG. You've touched on a hot button for me. I think the health insurance industry in America has cut a fat hog. I think, quite frankly, they have failed the American people.

Mr. SHADEGG. It does. I think they have failed to provide economic coverage to the American people. I think they have failed to hold down costs. I think that the health insurance industry is largely to blame for a system that wastes a ton of money; yet it's the government that puts them in that position, because it's the government that says that you and I can't buy first-dollar coverage just for ourselves without paying for it with after-tax dollars. In this bill, I think we ought to be making the American health insurance companies compete with each other, and they don't right now. I can hear now the howls and screams of the health insurance executives across the country, saying, Of course we compete with each other. What are you talking about? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. They compete to get your employer to buy their products. They don't compete to get you to buy their products. I've got to tell you, in my life, I've worked for a number of different employers. I've never had an employer say to me, Look. I'll buy your suits for you because I know better what kind of suits you need than you do; or, I'll buy your car for you because I know better what kind of car you need than you do; or, I'll buy your home for you because I know better what kind of home you should live in than you do. I've never had any of them say, I'll buy your auto insurance for you because I know better than you do. With all of those other products, we allow individuals to pick the products. I pick out my own suits. I pick out my own home. I pick out my own auto. I pick out my own auto insurance, my own homeowners' insurance, and my own life insurance. Interestingly, in each of those businesses, costs aren't going up as fast as they are in health care. They're going up at a slower rate. Now, why is that? Ah, could it be that those companies, the people who sell me suits, are competing with other people? Could it be that the people who sell me a house are competing with other builders? Let's just talk about one clear comparison. When you go home tonight, turn on the TV, Doctor. I guarantee that you will see advertisements for auto insurance by GEICO, by Progressive, by Allstate, by State Farm, by Farmers. There will be a slew of TV commercials on your TV tonight, and every single commercial will say the same thing, which is, Buy our auto insurance, and we will charge you less and will give you more. They're pounding each other's heads in with competition. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid growing up, there was a song called ``Breaking Up is Hard to Do.'' You've probably heard it. Allstate has an ad out right now. It uses that song ``Breaking Up is Hard to Do.'' Allstate says, Guess what? If you'll fire your auto insurance company and buy ours, you'll get a better deal, but since you probably don't want to fire your auto insurance company, Allstate will do it for you. Now, it's interesting. Here are these auto insurance companies that are pounding each other's heads, saying they can give you a better product for a lower price. How many ads like that do you think you'll see tonight by UnitedHealthcare or Blue Cross Blue Shield or Aetna, saying, Buy our health care product, and we'll give you our health care plan, and we'll give you lower health insurance costs and better health insurance coverage? I know the answer. I think you know the answer. You will not see a single ad from a health insurance company, saying, Buy our health insurance plan, and we will charge you less and give you more. Do you know why? Because they don't have to compete for our business. That's just dead wrong. If this bill does one thing, it ought to make those guys compete for our business. Instead, look at what this bill does: Stunningly, the White House says that the answer to solving health care problems in America is to force us to buy a health insurance plan from the guys who already are selling us lousy, expensive health insurance. It has got an individual mandate. It has got an employer mandate. They're saying, We're going to fix health care in America. We're going to make you buy that crummy product that the current health insurance companies are selling you. How is that going to work? So let's talk about who has cut a fat hog in this deal. The health insurance industry came into this, and they said, Here is what we want out of health insurance reform. We want no public plan, because that would be competition, and we don't want to compete with a public plan. Well, maybe they've got a point. They said, Well, we do want an individual mandate. Guess what they're going to get? The bill that the Senate passed, the bill we're going to vote on in this House, says there will be no public plan, but they're going to compel, at almost gunpoint, every American to buy a health insurance plan, approved by the Federal Government, from one of those same health insurance companies that are overcharging us now. The White House says they're fighting the health insurance industry? Get a grip.

Mr. SHADEGG. They're in bed with them.

Mr. SHADEGG. But wait. But wait. Without a 2,700-page bill, you couldn't hide the Cornhusker Kickback. You couldn't hide the Gator Aid. You couldn't hide the Louisiana Purchase. I haven't even gotten to all of them yet, but go ahead.

Mr. SHADEGG. There you go.

Mr. SHADEGG. Wait. Can I stop you right there?

Mr. SHADEGG. I was the first guy to introduce a bill to allow cross- State-line purchase.

Mr. SHADEGG. You just used the number of 12 million. Two professors at the University of Minnesota, which is not exactly a conservative university, said, if you just enacted cross-State-line purchases, then that would enable 12 million additional Americans to afford health insurance with not one penny of cost to the American taxpayer.

Mr. SHADEGG. I just want to reiterate what you said: A health care decision ought to be made by the patient, the family, and the physician.

Mr. SHADEGG. Yet that's not how the system works today.

Mr. SHADEGG. In the system today, your employer picks the plan, and the plan picks the doctor. You don't get to pick the plan, and you don't get to pick the doctor. If the plan or the doctor abuses you, you can't fire them.

Mr. SHADEGG. Your idea is we should empower patients to be able to pick their plans and to be able to pick their doctors, which we could do by, number one, letting those Americans who can afford it but who don't get employer-provided care buy health care without paying a tax penalty; number two, letting those who get money from their employers either take their employers' plans or pick their own plans. I guess that's why we call it ``patient choice.'' Instead of empowering patients, this bill that we're going to vote on of 2,000-and-some-odd pages, the Senate bill, which has these 11 special backroom deals in it--and I still haven't gotten to all of them. That bill says, no, we shouldn't make it the patient, his or her family, and the doctor. We shouldn't leave it as the employer is overruling you. We should make it that the government is controlling the system.

Mr. SHADEGG. It's a third-party pay system that exists right now. It does not work when your employer controls your health care plan. It will not work when the government controls your health care plan. It makes all the sense in the world to let people control their own health care plans. I've got a couple of myths and facts here I thought I'd conclude with. The White House says that your insurance premiums will decrease if this bill is enacted. Interestingly, the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation say that the average premium per person covered for new nongroup policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law. So we're going to put the government in charge, and premiums will go up. The President said that you could keep your coverage if you like it. Interestingly, in Baltimore, when he came and talked to us, he admitted that was no longer the case. In fact, here are the numbers: Between 8 and 9 million people who would be covered by an employment-based plan under current law would not have that offer of coverage if this bill passes. I think this is a critically important debate. I think we can reform health care in America. I think we can find ideas on the other side of the aisle and on this side of the aisle. I think we can get to reform, but I don't think the way to do that is with a system that moves power away from you and me and gives it to the government. I thank the gentleman for his assistance. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support of this critically needed legislation, the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act; and I want to compliment the author of the legislation, Ms. Matsui, for her efforts. Like her, I have a tragic story that has been brought to my attention which will be addressed by this legislation, and I want to make it clear how important I believe this legislation is to millions of potential victims who go unknowingly onto cruise ships. Merrian Carver, the daughter of one my constituents, Ken Carver, was a vibrant young woman who had her entire life ahead of her. Tragically, at the age of 40, she disappeared from a cruise ship in August of 2004 and was never found. That would be bad enough in itself, but it is the outrageous conduct afterward which this legislation addresses. There have already been comments about the lack of supervision or safety or the lack of protection of the law, but in this instance there was callous disregard. The steward of the ship knew she was onboard and that she had used her room the first night, and he conscientiously reported that she did not use her room again any of the subsequent nights. She had gone missing on the second day of the cruise, and nothing was done. No law enforcement officials were contacted. No family members were contacted. Nothing was done. In essence, the steward was told, Be quiet and mind your own business. At the end of the trip, Merrian's personal effects were simply boxed up. The FBI was not notified. The family was not notified. Ultimately, Merrian's family, in a desperate effort, was forced to hire a law firm and a private investigator. Again, however, they met with resistance and unnecessary delays in response by the cruise ship. It took days to confirm that Merrian had, in fact, boarded the ship, and video confirmed that she had boarded the ship. And it took even more time to get permission to interview the steward. She had not been in her room for 5 days, and her absence had simply gone unreported and unacted upon. Her family hired a private investigator, and he was resisted in his efforts to talk to people on the ship. Ultimately, the law firm that they retained obtained a court order to interview the steward and other personnel responsible. This simply should not happen on ships that call on American ports. It should never happen, and Americans need to be aware. Again, I compliment Ms. Matsui. This legislation takes important and reasonable steps to protect Americans and all citizens when they board these ships. Cruise ships have a duty of responsibility to the people who board them. This will make those cruise ships more accountable and safer. It will, as has been mentioned, require some video surveillance to monitor crime onboard. It will require crime scene investigation training and certification for some cruise vessel crew members. It will require other provisions to ensure that if one of our loved ones goes missing on a cruise ship, they are notified. Importantly, it will require the preservation of evidence. Like Ms. Matsui's constituent who was the victim of a rape, this legislation will require that rape kits be kept onboard in case such a tragic event happens again. This is critically needed legislation. It has followed somewhat of a tortured path. It came across this floor once before, and its ultimate enactment into law was jeopardized by being coupled with other legislation. I compliment the chairman of the subcommittee and the chairman of the full committee and the ranking member. I think it is essential that this legislation be enacted, and I compliment you for separating it for a stand-alone vote.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I just want to say that I hope Americans are thinking through the various ramifications. I think you just made an excellent point. We are talking about trials of terrorists in civilian courts in the biggest city, or one of the biggest cities in the Nation. You just made a brilliant point. What about the guards and their families, the court clerks and their families, the bailiffs and their families, and on and on and on, all of whom now will be exposed to perhaps pressure, kidnapping, threats. But what about, how long will this take? Are these trials that can be concluded in weeks? No, I don't think so. You are a judge. Do you think these trials can be concluded in months? Or perhaps, as our colleague Mr. Hoekstra pointed out on Face the Nation yesterday, these are trials which, if the defense exploits them, as defense attorneys do in courts in America, could go on for months or years, ripping open the wounds of the people whose family members died in those attacks. Why? Why in God's name are we giving terrorists the protection of trials in American criminal justice courts? It is insane. It absolutely makes no sense. I believe that we are exposing the people of New York, the people involved in these courts and the people involved in their security all for no reason whatsoever, and it won't just go on for a few days or a few weeks or a few months. I would like to direct the attention of the listening audience to the points that were made in today's media. This is going to be a field day for al Qaeda to learn how America and the American system of intelligence gathers information, and they'll be able to drag it out in open public court rather than in a military tribunal. Somebody explain to me--I wish somebody could explain to me--why terrorists deserve the protections of the U.S. Constitution as if they had broken civil laws while they're operating inside this country. Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was not in the United States when he planned this. This was not a simple murder. This was a terrorist attack by enemy combatants. We may not want to call it war. We may not want to call it a war on terror. We may not want to accept the fact that there are people who hate us, as the quote the gentleman from Texas just read demonstrates; but it's reality. And we ought to be dealing with it as a terrorist threat in the tribunals set up for terrorist threats and for war crimes and crimes committed in the process of combat. There was no mistaking, absolutely no mistaking, what al Qaeda wanted to accomplish by these attacks, and they were not done for mere criminal purposes. They were done to terrorize a Nation. And we have lost sight of that, and I think this administration has lost sight of it. I think this Attorney General is making a grave, grave mistake. And the damage we have seen in the past when our intelligence community is injured because this kind of information is made public and we are no longer able to operate as an intelligence community protecting a Nation against foreign enemies should act, I think, is a risk which we should never be undertaking under these circumstances. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I know his years on the bench as a trial judge watching criminal trials makes it painfully clear that that's a procedure designed to protect defendants accused by the Nation of crimes under the laws and statutes of this Nation. That's not what we are dealing with here, and I thank the gentleman for making that point.

Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, I think it's fascinating that we all stand here, all three of us, with backgrounds in prosecution. The gentleman was a Federal prosecutor. I was in the Arizona Attorney General's Office for many years and involved in the prosecutions of a number of cases. You sat on the bench. All three of us come here instinctively tonight because we are so repulsed by the notion that American criminal courts intended to provide a plethora of rights to Americans accused of crimes inside this country are being afforded to someone who is clearly a terrorist, who clearly plotted from outside this country, who clearly plotted acts of war, and who said, as the gentleman just pointed out, as soon as he was apprehended outside the country, I want an attorney and I want to go to New York. And this administration is going to give him both of those wishes? That's an outrage. I want to explore the point that my colleague Mr. Gohmert made earlier. This is supposed to be a Nation of laws. Laws that anticipate that crimes committed by war criminals, enemy combatants, terrorists seeking to attack this Nation and all it stands for, they weren't seeking to attack a random group of people on an airplane or in a building. They wanted to attack this Nation. The law says how that should be dealt with. It's supposed to be dealt with when those terrorists, those war criminals are apprehended, as Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was. They are supposed to be tried in tribunals. You just read us the law. How does Mr. Holder, how does President Obama get around the law? And do not the people of America have the right to demand that the law be followed and that these individuals be charged and tried in tribunals held by the military because they are war criminals? They are not civilians and they are not U.S. citizens and they are not afforded the protections of the criminal courts of the United States.

Mr. SHADEGG. So we're going to read them their Miranda rights? We're going to provide lawyers to them out on the battlefield?

Mr. SHADEGG. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHADEGG. So the Secretary of Defense may choose, pressured by the President, not to convene a tribunal. How then does that give the President of the United States the right to bring them to the United States and to try them in a criminal court? Because they did not violate a civilian law of the United States. I submit they committed acts of war. Does he have the power to overrule the law and bring them here and say they are something they are not, say they are not terrorists when their conduct constituted an act of terror? Or is he simply then obligated to hold them if they don't conduct a military tribunal?

Mr. SHADEGG. Let will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHADEGG. Does that then raise the issue of whether their refusal to charge them with the conduct they, in fact, engaged in, which I would argue was clearly an act of war, clearly an act of terrorism against the Nation, if the officials charged with the duty of charging them with that conduct, acts of war against the United States, acts of terrorism against the United States, the Secretary of the Army, the Attorney General, or the President of the United States, are they not then derelict in their duty and are they not then subject to being either punished by the Congress or removed from office for failing to do their duty to charge Khalid Shiekh Mohammed with the conduct he engaged in, which was an act of war against the United States?

Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, I'll let him make his point.

Mr. SHADEGG. And if the gentleman would yield, and he took credit for this act, and said it was a part of that war against the United States. How in God's name could Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not be at least charged and tried with an act of terrorism against the United States which, under current law, if we are in fact a Nation of laws, must be tried in a military tribunal? This country, the American people, get it. They see that in the name of political correctness we are placing an imprimatur on these acts that they were not acts of war, and that is not what the American people believe. We will rue the day, we will as a Nation, rue the day that we treat our enemies as criminals and not as enemy combatants who commit war against us.