Don Nickles: “Health club memberships, hearings aids or hearing aid exams, homemaker services, hypnosis, massage therapy, physical…”

“Health club memberships, hearings aids or hearing aid exams, homemaker services, hypnosis, massage therapy, physical therapy consisting of general exercise programs, plastic and other surgical procedures primarily for cosmetic purposes, smoking cessation programs, and several others. My point is, here is a Government plan for veterans that has specifically excluded items that should not be covered. I will venture to say every private health care plan has excluded items as well. Under the bill we have before us, it says you don't have to cover excluded items except for--and then it opens the door. That, to me, says do not pay any attention to the contract. Contracts do not mean anything. What is the net result of that? If people who have contracts are not bound by the contracts, then the cost of providing health care is going to go way up. There is no real definitive way of knowing how much the coverage is going to cost because it is not defined coverage. There is nothing you can bank on. I compliment my friends and colleagues from Arizona and Nebraska for their leadership in putting this amendment together. This amendment is equally as important--maybe not quite as easy to understand but very much as important--for containing the cost of health care as anything we have considered so far. Are we going to allow people to have contracts? Are we going to live by those contracts? Or are we going to take the language in this bill and say: Contracts? We don't care.…”