Jim McDermott

If you have guaranteed issue, that is preexisting conditions are out of the way, you must have universal coverage.

They are going to have to change some state laws to actually make this rational.

If they are doing it together, they cannot do it together. Is that what you are saying?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to shift the questions just a little bit or the issues you have been dealing with here.

Small business people's problem is the banks will not lend to them unless they have got--I just tried to get my loan refinanced on my house.

That is his solution to this problem it sounds to me like.

I mean, I was here under Clinton when we set the Clinton rates. Okay? I was here in 1993 when we did that vote, 1994, and the country was booming.

We are paying twice what the French and the British and the Germans--everybody else is paying for health care, and our health statistics aren't better.

The question is, how do you fix--let's just take one area, doctor's fees?

Isn't that interesting? Now, here we have a doctor who doesn't know how his pay comes.

The average cost of health care per capita in the United States is $8,000, which is twice what it is in every European country.

The fix isn't just simply cutting physician fees. It is--you need fundamental reform.

Can it be done in a country that does not want to put the hammer down on those people who are making counterfeit things?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Krzanich, we pass laws here and the Government tries to do things to help, but I would like to have your assessment of at least one thing that has been tried.

Trade represents enormous opportunities for U.S. workers, farmers, and business.

More jobs, more growth, businesses more competitive.

We come to it by sober, responsible recognition that the fiscal alternatives we face, challenges we face, cannot be met responsibly without a modest increase in revenues through tax reform.

So the President needn't waste his time listening to this stuff: Where is your proposal, where is their proposal? They don't have one because they won't stay at the table.

There isn't anybody who sits on the top row of this committee who believes that there is going to be tax reform in the next year.

I think the President has the right ones. History has taught us that if we don't keep investing in the economy, we are not going to keep it moving.

My understanding that the Joint Tax study... should only analyze domestic tax expenditures, not international ones...

We are talking about a new world that we are trying to reform now than the one they were reforming in 1980.

You want to retain that. So that means you can only finance about a 3 percent reduction, 3.5 percent.

We are all for tax reform. Everybody in this room is for tax reform.

How do you deal with the question of getting patients to think about this before they are in the cath lab, sedated?