Roy Blunt: “I thank Chairman Barton for yielding and for bringing this bill to the floor. The chairman and members of our committee…”

“I thank Chairman Barton for yielding and for bringing this bill to the floor. The chairman and members of our committee, particularly Mrs. Johnson from Connecticut on the Ways and Means Committee, have been so instrumental in getting this bill to the floor today. This is a critically important start. As I sat here and listened to the debate, it is clearly like we are debating two different bills: one that wants to change the entire world in one bill and one that wants to step forward. On the privacy issue, this does not do anything to change current privacy standards, but what it does is allow the information that people have about their health to be shared in a way that helps them. And in terms of the cost, taxpayers pay an awful lot of the health care cost in the country today. And as my good friend Mr. Pickering pointed out, this is a way to minimize cost and maximize benefits to patients at the same time. That does not happen very often. Mr. Chairman, we have a little town in my district, Branson, Missouri, and it has lots of tourists. Seven or eight million people come there ever year. Last year, last August, I was sitting at lunch beside the hospital administrator, and he shared with me that particularly in about the fall, most of the tourists that come are retired. Many of them come as part of a package travel situation.…”