but if we put in a system where people have coverage, and the number of uninsured people goes down with our reforms, the amount we pay hospitals to treat uninsured people should go down as well. reducing these payments gradually as more and more people have coverage will save us over $106 billion. we'll make sure the difference goes to the hospitals that need it most. we can also save about $75 billion through more efficient purchasing of prescription drugs. we can save about $1 billion more by rooting out waste, abuse, fraud throughout our health care system that no one is charging more for a service than it's worth or charging a dime for a service they don't provide. let me be clear. i'm committed to making these cuts in a way that protect ours senior citizens. in fact these proposals will actually extend the life of the medicare trust mund by seven years and reduce premiums for

medicare beneficiaries over the next 10 years. i'm working with aarp to uphold that commit. . now for those of you who took out your pencil and paper, altogether these savings mean we've put about $950 billion on the table. .

by making the reforms that will help slow the growth rate of healthcare costs over the coming decades, bending the curve, we can look forward to faster economic growth, higher living standards and falling instead of rising budget deficits. i know people are cynical whether we can do this or not. i know there will be disagreements about how to proceed in the days ahead. will is probably healthy debate within the a.m.a. that is good. i also know this. we can't let it moment pass us

by. the other day a friend of mine, a congressman, handed me a magazine with a special issue titled "the crisis in american medicine." one article notes soaring charges, another warns about the volume of utilization of services. another asks if we can find a better way than fee for service for paying for medical care. it speaks to many of the challenges we face today. the thing is this special issue was published by harper's magazine in october of 1960. before i was born. members of the american medical association, and my fellow americans, i'm here today because i don't want our children and their children to still be speaking of a crisis in american medicine 50 years from now, suffering from spiraling

costs that we did not stem, or sicknesses that we did not cure. i don't want them to be burdened with massive deficits we did not curb, or worsening economy that we didn't rebuild. i want them to benefit from a health care system that works for all of us, where families can open a doctor's bill without dreading what is inside, where parents are talking to their kids and getting them to get regular checkups and checking themselves for preventable ailments. they are feeding kids healthier foods. patients are spending more time with their doctors, and doctors can pull up on the computer all the medical information and latest research they will ever want to know to meet patients' needs. where orthopedists and nephrologists, oncologists are working together to treat a human being.

where what is best about america's healthcare system has become the hallmark of america's healthcare system. that is the healthcare system we can build. that is the future i'm convinced it within our reach. if we are willing to come together and bring about that future, then we will not only make americans healthier, we will not only unleash america a's economic potential but reaffirm the ideals that led you into this noble profession and we will build a health care system that lets all americans benefit. thanks very much, a.m.a. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

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>> wednesday house republicans outlined their healthcare plan calling for universal access to insurance while rejecting a government run option. healthcare legislation is being debated in both the house and senate level. this is a half hour. >> good morning, everyone. republicans want to work with president obama and their democratic cheeks to make sure all americans have access to high quality affordable health insurance. i want to congratulate roy blunt and all of the memos of the healthcare solutions working group that are here with us today. they have worked for months on making sure that we have a plan that will accomplish the goal that the president and democrats all agree on.

if you look at the plan that will be unveiled this morning, we take the current healthcare system and improve it to make it work better for all americans. provide easier access to health insurance for those that can't afford it to make sure those with preexisting conditions have access to affordable health insurance. if you look at this plan, it really will ensure most americans and really will improve the consult of our healthcare system and maintain the innovation that we have in our current system. we all understand that we have the best healthcare system in the world. 90% of the world's innovation in healthcare comes from the united states. as we proceed down this path we have to be very careful that we don't do anything that will impede the kind of quality and innovation that we have in our current system and we believe that our plan is a big improvement on the current system that will cost far less

than what the administration is proposing. if you look at their plan, it really is a big government-run plan that will take control of the delivery of healthcare in america. i don't think that is what most americans want. families and small businesses are looking for access. lets washing on that problem and -- let's work on that and improve the current process. this is a serious proposal. we are hoping president obama and our democratic cleanings will take our ideas seriously and use them as they begin to develop their program. but everything that we have seen thus far, whether it was the stimulus bill, whether it of the omnibus appropriation bill, they have ignored our better solutions. but we are going to continue to offer better solutions as i promised on the opening day. when we found ourselves in a position of having to say no, having to be in opposition to what the president or our democratic colleagues wanted to

propose, it was our obligation to come up with what we thought was a better solution. this, in our opinion, clearly is a better solution for american families and small businesses who want better access to healthcare. >> i do want to recognize roy in his leadership in the healthcare solutions working group working with other ranking members to come up with a republican plan. healthcare in america is about choice and at its core it is about american families having the ability to choose the healthcare that best needs their -- meets their need. the congressional budget office said this week that the democrat plan will cost at a minimum a trillion dollars it implement. but that plan clearly misses the mark at many levels. first of all, we come to find out that maybe a third of the current uninsured are going to be covered at the expense of a trillion dollars.

as broken own on an individual basis that is well over $6,500 per person to insure when we know now the average cost per individual in the private plans today is less than $5,000. clearly government plan is not the answer. so, our republican plan is sorely needed. we've got to come to a consensus on how we implement healthcare reform in a reasonable fashion that is responsible in terms of taxpayer expenditures and delivers on what the american people want, which is choice in their healthcare. so, we do that starting with the premise that people ought to be able to keep the healthcare they have got if they want it. that is the essence of the choice that we are talking about. and once we establish that tenet, we then say, look, part of why it whole discussion has become so important is that the

costs in this country have come out of control and led to increasing numbers of uninsured americans. so, how is it that we are going to afford the uninsured access to affordable coverage? the tenet that we are operating on and our plan is based around is we want to provide access to a basic plan for all americans and to coverage in terms of a basic plan. we do so by making sure we keep down costs and incorporate the ability for folks to pull together, to ago ses lower costs -- to access lower costs and bring private sector that the game and keep government out. i applaud the thaefrts have resulted and work forward to working with president obama, speaker pelosi, to make sure we do arrive at a consensus so we can have some healthcare reform in this country. >> thank you, eric. we have had a hard-working group

and it continues to work to be part of this debate and part of the solution, the healthcare solutions group hopes to be exactly that. and republicans in the house are for a health care plan that is more affordable, that everyone has access to regardless of any preexisting condition they had with a renewed focus on quality and the doctor-patient relationship. democrats know that americans who have healthcare coverage now generally like it. that is why they constantly say if you like what you have, you can keep it. we believe and everybody annualizing that future marketplace seems to believe that if there is a government competitor you will not be able to keep what you have because if there is a government competitor, the government will never compete fla and before you know it there are no competitors. so what you know is no longer available for you to have. in fact, we would add a caveat. but you used to have more choices even if you like what

you had. more of a marketplace, more access to individual decision making in healthcare. one of those decisions might very well be i'm pleased to continue to have the benefit of the insurance i get from my company or it might be i want to take the tax benefit and go out and have the same kind of benefit with a plan that better fits the needs of my family or myself. there are ways to get uninsured people on the insurance rolls without having a trillion dollar price tag. we will be talking about them. there are ways to make medicaid more efficient and also ways to be sure everybody who has access to medicaid knows they have access to medicaid and gets on the medicaid system or the schip system. many of the uninsured today qualify for existing members. 10 million have insurance available to them at work and so among other things we think

employees should have to opt out aggressively of choosing their insurance at work as opposed to aggressively having to opt in. there are things like that that can make a big difference can in a hurry. on that groundwork that government will never compete fairly look at the auto industry. the government rush run general motors with gmac financing for a car is close to zero. ford motor credit it is quite a bit above zero. for those that say this is just another competitor in the field and won't make any difference, it just makes competition bigger, that is not -- there is no fact ever that bears that out. the government will not compete fairly. we believe there is a big marketplace beyond today's marketplace that we can help create and our members are going to talk about that. mr. camp, mr. barton, mr. mckeon and jenny brown-waite and we

will talk about elements of the plan. we will be working with the drafting folks on that and hopefully while we are almost always last in line with the resources available to congress these days, we are going to be working hard now to bring these concepts into legislative language as quickly as we can. >> thank you, roy. thank you for your leadership on the solutions group. i want to thank leader boehner and all of my colleagues here and those that are not here who helped really make it possible for us to come forward with an american solution to healthcare. the president said this should have a uniquely american solution. we have an american plan. one that we believe as has been said will really focus on affordability, accessibility and availability. the question is how do we do that? we think that it is very

important that there be a robust waste fraud and abuse oversight of healthcare, not only in the government programs and medicare and medicaid but clearly the duplicity that away find in our healthcare system there should be strong oversight and that will be part of our plan. you can't have a serious discussion about healthcare reform unless you agree to address the issue of liability reform, defensive medicine, medical malpractice. we think that should also be an important part of healthcare moving forward. the president has just gbegun, really the first statement we heard at the a.m. after tchla.m. and we think people that are at low and modest incomes should get help with buying insurance. also those at or near retirement between the ages of 55 and 64 should get some assistance with purchasing health insurance.

lastly, there needs to an very strong wellness provision. prevention is key to helping lower costs and one of the goals we have is trying to get the costs out of healthcare and prevention is critical. we have seen it works. there are a number of areas in the private sector where healthcare costs have gone down because employees have had incentives to meet healthy lifestyle criteria that we think are important to getting to the long-term costs of healthcare. those are just some of the areas this summary will focus on. we are working toward legislation with my colleagues in the congress and we look forward to offering a solution and being part of the bipartisan solution to healthcare and offering some good ideas to the debate. thank you. congressman barton. >> thank. republicans believe that if you need health care you go see your doctor or nurse, don't go see a

government bureaucratic. our basic premise is we want to work within the existing market structure. we don't want to create a new federal bureaucracy, new federal mandates. that only cause more problems. the energy and commerce committee will begin to meet next week. chairman waxman has said he will have three hearings on healthcare next week. we will be engaged this those. if and when the democrats decide to go to mark-up, we will have a republican amendments and alternatives as part of the comprehensive package that is being talked about today. as has already been said, we believe that we need to reform medica medicaid, we need to reform schip. we believe we should give people the right, the option, if they want to take the amount that we pay for medicaid and s-ship and get a -- s-clchip we would give

them the premium assistance to do that. we believe we need to take pressure off medicaid by correct incentives for long-term healthcare so we have some proposals that will do that. we believe that people that work for small businesses that don't provide healthcare should be able to form associations and pooling arrangements either within like businesses, like associations, we even believe that states should be able to form regional pools across state lines so that people that work in areas that don't have healthcare providing by their business could be part of a pool. weity that the federal -- we think the federal government should provide premium assistance for them. we believe in a refundable tax credit that would be covered under the ways an means committee. we believe individuals can make informed choices if we've healthcare transparency. we will have things that provide more transparency.

we believe that doctors should be reimbursed adequately for services so we will have a proposal that fixes the physician reimbursement problem. we are not sure yet if that is going to be a two to three-year fix or a permanent fix. that will depend on the funds that are available once we decide what everything is going to cost. so, we are prepared to be engaged in the process. mr. blunt has done an excellent job of this and leader boehner has been personally involved in hopefully if the democrats mean what they say we will have a bipartisan solution. we have no problem with president obama's general principles. we have taken them and the big difference is we believe in a market and private sector approach as owe potatoesed to

government approach. we have a mark-up now so i will go participate in that mark-up. >> when leader bane are and whip cantor asked roy blunt to pull this group together we agreed to build on what works and fix what is broken. we said that serious healthcare reform plan needs to let americans who like their health care coverage keep it. we need to protect americans from being forced into a new government run healthcare plan that will eliminate health coverage that 120 million americans currently receive through their job. this is a major contrast with the democratic plan which c.b.o. tells us will shift millions of americans out of there existing often employer sponsored healthcare. by and large our employer based healthcare system is a success and most employees are happy with the health coverage they receive at work. my focus throughout this process because of my role on the education labor committee has

been to build on the success of the employer based coverage. there are common sense ways to expand employer-provided coverage and reduce the number of up insured. for example, small business health plans make coverage more affordable for small businesses and workers. i want to thank leader maintainer, whip kantor and roy blunt for the great job they have done and all that worked on this to make a sensible program for americans that they will enjoy as we move forward. thank i. >> i'm from florida and guess what. i have the highest number of people on medicare. and every day 8,000 additional people are going on medicare as they turn 65. medicare is having severe financial problems. the other day when the president spoke before the a.m.a. this were points where he obviously was not very well received. let me tell you, the doctors in my district and drinks around

america are not booing but they are informing their patients both medicare around non-medicare patients about the dangers of the obama health plan and what the democrats are proposing. people want to have access and they certainly want affordability. one of the reasons why i'm very excited about the plan, i also have a large number of people who are 55 to 64 who moved to florida as to many districts and they then start to have some health problems. this offers them availability and affordability. so they won't have to wait until they are 65 to get medicare. there is additional fixes in the bill that will increase funding and availability of federally qualified health centers which are a great resource in the majority of districts that offer very low-cost healthcare insurance as part of the

solution. so, doctors are warning their patients about what is going to happen because they see that the obama plan just simply is not going to work for the patient. and in this bill we protect the doctor-patient relationship which is so important to people of all ages. >> as a hard surgeon with over 20 years of experience in dealing with some of the most critically ill patients doing open heart surgery, lung cancer surgery, i have seen the sickest of the sick in america and i have dealt right at the heart of the problem where we deal with the doctor-patient relationship because that is where the cost, the primary cost driver at the intersection of that relationship. there are secondary cost drivers in the insurance market. what i like about what we have done, we have taken a comprehensive look at this

because my goal was to ensure that all americans have the highest quality access to a doct doctor. and our plan will do that. we also look at the insurance markets and make some substantive reforms in the insurance markets creating a wide range of choices that will open things up for americans and create different options for different families, small businesses and so forth. so, we have taken a comprehensive look at this. but i have to say once again, if you don't focus on the doctor-patient relationship, the behavior of the doctor and behavior of the patient and where that intersection occurs, or where it doesn't occur, that is where we are really driving the costs with utilization, care in the emergency rooms and so forth. so we focused on all those things i have just mentioned and i believe we have a very good plan that will have bipartisan support. it will meet the principles outlined by president obama, the principles that we have outlined as a solutions group. so i'm optimistic that we can

move forward in a bipartisan way to have a health care plan that all americans are proud of, an american healthcare solution. i want to thank leader boehner, whip cantor and our ranking members and we are hoping this is the beginning of a substantive debate of healthcare, thank you. >> questions? >> what do you think of the plan in the kennedy bill to have the government fund community organizations particularly community organizations of [inaudible] to go out and do wellness and prevention monitor i ing? >> well, any time our friends on the other side start talking about community organizations we usually think acorn and they do, too. we are for community health centers, we are for everybody

having access to a primary care physician. we are not for empowering a lot of activists on the other side to go out and ask people how they are feeling. that won't solve any problem and it is not too hard these days to find a bill that has something to enhance the finances of "community organizations" and i think everybody has begun to see through that for what it is. yes? >> your plan doesn't have a lot of numbers in it. i'm wondering when you have a sense of how your land will cost, how you will pay for it, through tax increases and how many uninsured will you actually get health insurance? >> we believe we can come up with a plan where every person in the uninsured has access to insurance. we are going to have no mandate, no employee mandate, no individual mandate. and we are going to try to think

of ways to encourage the 28-year-old guy who thinks he is invisib invisib invoiincible to get into the system. a lot of uninsured fit that category. at the same time there are people who are uninsured who don't have access to coverage today and we want to guarantee that they have access to coverage and access that they can afford. affordability is always kind of a hard to define term. what you are willing to pay, what is appropriate to play and what you would like to lay may be different things. we want this to be as affordable as possible. we would not have coverage paid for by taxpayers for people at 500% of the poverty level. we will not have coverage where the taxpayers pay for families who make over $100,000. that is not going to be part of our plan. we are going to look at the numbers where we have to help people. we might start by looking at the numbers that the percentages we allowed for medicare part d for st