Universal Health Care
House of Representatives - March 4, 2004

Madam Speaker, I want to reassure my colleague from Massachusetts that there is hope after all. The Bush administration has endorsed and even funded universal health insurance. The thing is, the President's universal health insurance program is for the people of Iraq, not anything for the 44 million Americans.

Madam Speaker, we already pay enough for universal health care in this country, but we are not getting it. The administration misleads the American people by having the Secretary of Health and Human Services say, and I quote, ``You are still taken care of in America. That certainly could be defined as universal coverage.'' The truth is that every other industrialized nation in the world has a universal health system except the United States. Half the bankruptcies in this country are due to health care costs.

The United States spent $1.6 trillion on health care in 2003. That is an average of $4,900 per person for the entire country. The average of the next 29 industrialized countries is less than half that amount, about $2,100 per person. Switzerland, at number two, spends $3,106. That is $1,800 less per year per person than the United States. Every one of these countries has universal health insurance except us.

We have 44 million uninsured and 40 million underinsured, and premiums are going up. At the same time, employers are shifting more of their health care costs on to their employees. Every strike has as the number one issue of contention their health care benefits. They just settled a grocery strike in California that has been going on for 6 months and it was all about that.

Seventy-two percent of the uninsured are in families where there is a full-time worker. Sixteen percent have two full-time workers. Only 62 percent of all employers even offer health insurance, and only 60 percent of employees can take advantage of it. How bad does it have to get before we begin to do what is necessary?

Not many years ago opponents and an army of lobbyists turned back the last great hope for real reform. We were told managed care in the marketplace would save the health care system. It never happened. All through the 1990s when the economy was hot, the number of Americans without health insurance went up. When the economy tanked under President Bush, the number of Americans without health care kept going up. How bad does it have to get?

A long time ago we made some decisions in this country: Police, fire protection, national defense, education, and highways would be issues of the common good. We would do them together. It is time for health care to be done as a common good. We have the power and ability to take care of everyone, from patient to physician to provider.

National health care does not mean government medicine.

It means a guaranteed revenue stream to give a stable set of benefits for everyone that cannot be taken away.

At the present time, government at all levels already finances 60 percent of all the health care spending in this country. That is over $2,600 per person. Remember, the international average is $2,100 per person so we are already spending enough. If we were tight-fisted, we could have that kind of a system.

The fact is that we simply do not have the political will to establish the common good. If our costs were in line with other industrialized nations who have a national health care system, government spending in this country alone would cover our costs. I can hear the chorus already. Do not let anyone tell you that health care in England or Germany or Sweden or Norway or France or Japan is not as good as ours. Ours is good if you are lucky with the right piece of plastic in your pocket when you get sick. But if you do not have insurance, it is a real crapshoot. It is a real roll of the dice.

Americans deserve universal health care, just like everybody else from the industrialized nations, all of the way to Iraq. Yes, most people would actually save money, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because if we tightened up the system and got rid of the millions of forms, the hundred billion dollars' worth of paper that we put in every year, we would have a cheaper system than we presently do with guaranteed benefits and guaranteed revenue.

The President has said, ``These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care.'' He said it right here in the well. Every health insurer in the United States dictates coverage. That is how they do business, and America is rationing care. The time has come to change that. We will talk more about that later.

We need a solution.

I have introduced H.R. 1200, the American Health Security Act. I also support other plans to reform our health care system.

Reform will not change how health care is delivered, only how it's paid for.

Health care providers will continue to do business as they already do, competing with one another, striving to be the best.

Under my plan people can choose their doctor and hospital, an incentive for innovation and a reward for excellence.

For health care providers, national health insurance means a guaranteed revenue stream.

For Americans, national health insurance means coverage for everyone.

America was founded on the premise of working together for the common good. Our society recognizes this responsibility every time a fire truck responds to a fire or a police car responds to a call for help.

Today, there is an urgent call for help from voices across America.

We have it in our power to respond. Come on Mr. President. We are already paying for universal health care. Let us make sure Americans get it.