Greg Ganske

I go overseas and I do cleft lip and palate operations in Third World countries where the families cannot afford it. But I will tell you what, people are spending an awful lot of money in this country for their health insurance. It ought…

Let us deal with some of the myths about the Campbell bill. Some people say that this would allow price fixing. I wonder if the gentleman would like to address that issue.

That is a good point. Now, what we are talking about then is for a group of physicians, for instance, that have seen abuses by that HMO to be able to get together, possibly to hire somebody to negotiate for them to go to that HMO and…

Reclaiming my time, let us go back to this for a minute. Let us say you have a family practitioner out in a small rural town and he knows of some examples where this HMO has not treated his patients fairly; and he says, you know, I think…

They will go next door, and so what we are looking at is an ability, and I think this is crucial, the gentleman has it in your bill, and we have to repeat this, the gentleman has in his bill a prohibition on strikes.

Let me get this straight, reclaiming my time. So while the insurance industry is critical of the bill, they, at the same time, have an antitrust exemption. Is that right?

I agree with the gentlewoman, let us say that you did set up personal accounts, and how you do that is open to debate, but let us say that you did that, you reduced the average payroll tax for a worker; let us, say, number one that we are…

I was very moved by your presentation on social security. I think it is a very, very important issue. There is no doubt about it, that elderly women depend on social security in order to stay out of poverty. The statistics of the…

If we are looking at devoting some funds for tax cuts, why do we not devote those tax cut funds or a large portion of it to relief on the payroll tax, which is the tax which hits the average American the hardest?

I just point out that my colleague from California has been a stalwart in working on matters of health concern for his constituents and in particular has been very strong on supporting a Patient's Bill of Rights. I appreciate his work and…

I appreciate the advice. Let me talk about a parable. There is a book down in the lobby. It is called House Mouse, Senate Mouse. It is a little book that I take to grade schools, usually about third-graders, and I read this story about the…

We just saw a report in Roll Call, the newspaper that covers the Hill, that shows that the Democratic Congressional Committee has raised more in soft money than the National Republican Congressional Committee.

This needs to be reemphasized. When we are talking about banning phoney issue ads, we are not talking about organizations that cannot put up those ads. We are just talking about the way they have to be financed.

Now, some people say that these issue ads, banning them would just protect incumbents. I disagree with that. Issue ads are run on both sides. They are run for incumbents, and they are run for challengers.

I think it is also true that some Departments of Labor under different Presidents more vigorously than others required that that Beck decision be made known to members of unions.

Is it not true that a member of a labor union can tell his union, I do not want any of my union dues used for that?

You do not know who is part of that. But, you know what? Maybe some of those funds were given to this ``charitable'' organization out of a national party, and those were soft money funds used by those donations from the national party. We…

And the sham issue ads may be funded by soft money, i.e., if they are paid for by the national parties. But they may also be paid for by who knows who.

Who knows. Who knows. Then you have basically a lack of truth in labeling, because you could have some committee set up that sounds great, the Committee to Save Medicare or something like that.

Let me just interject. The gentleman is right. I was talking about two issues at the same time. One was the issue of personal advocacy and the other was soft money. Some of these issue ads were run with millions and millions of dollars of…

There are two issues here, I agree. One is the issue advocacy ad and the other is the soft money. But the funding for those ads came from soft money. Now, I do not have a problem with a labor union forming a PAC and using that PAC money…

Let us take an example from today. Governor Bush has raised $67 million. There is nothing wrong with that. That money that he raised was from individual donations under Federal law at $1,000 maximum per individual.

In August I went on a surgical mission to Armenia. Our surgical mission was treated with great hospitality by our hosts and we were able to join with Armenian doctors and do teaching and help take care of patients. So it was with shock…

I point out that the language on medical privacy says the insurance company shall maintain a practice of protecting the confidentiality of individually identifiable consumer health and medical and genetic information and may disclose such…

I spent the weekend reading the Starr report and the White House rebuttal. The President's DNA on Monica Lewinsky's dress is clear proof that the President had sex with a White House intern. This means that the President lied when he…