so we ve identified areas we agree on, and then the question just is does that help the average family in the individual market who potentially can get costs. but steny, why don t you let me respond one thing, you get cost-shifted every penny that gets wasted in medicare and that gets cost-shifted to the private sector, so if, in fact, we re wasting the public sector, we re shifting it to the private sector. teny? mr. president, thank you very much. a quote i will use is we should have available and affordable health care to every american citizen, to every family. i suppose there are a whole lot of every americans and american families listening to us today and watching us, and they re hoping we re all sitting around here talking about them, not about us. that s the message they re sending to all of us and they re absolutely correct. and we believe that we have been addressing them and trying to get some of these stories that all of us here to a place where they won t
and thank you mr. president for the invitation today. i think as we focus this part of the conversation on cost, a lot of americans say to me if you re really interested in controlling cost, maybe you shouldn t be spending a trillion dollars on health care as the senate and house bills do. also, cutting medicare benefits by half a trillion dollars to fund some new entitlement is i think a step in the wrong direction and many americans do as well. the nonpartisan actuaries for the center for medicare and medicaid services say on page four of the letter on the senate-passed bill it would bend the cost curve in the wrong direction by about a quarter of a trillion dollars. they specifically say the health expenditures under the senate bill would increase by $222 billion. a key way of reducing costs that s missing from the house and senate bills is responsible lawsuit reform that guarantees injured parties, much like our two
insurance companies come forward should get money for, should go to the patient. so i think we can do all of these things, but if we re going to eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse in medicare, it does mean we re going to cut some of that out, and when i hear my friend dave camp say you cannot cut money out of medicare, we don t want to cut the good stuff that you point out or prevent or add prevention, but if one third, if what senator coburn says, that one third of medicare doesn t go to patient care, you can t just get up there and say we don t want to cut anything out of medicare. we want to cut the bad stuff and keep the good stuff and i think that s where we can find common ground on some of the things you ve mentioned, some of the things that are in that bill, and i hope at least in this area we can move forward that way, because frankly the republican party has always stood for getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse in the system, in 97, it of the centerpiece of your p
was very, very emotional. he said to me that he was getting ready to have transplant surgery, but he was told by the hospital that because he s on medicare that his postoperative treatment was going to be limited to three years. after that he ll have to find some way to pay. this man was very emotional today. what we re doing here fixes that, and i do believe that we ought to really be honest with the american people. we talk about what we are doing with medicare, we re trying to make sure that medicare is there for that man and so many others who will find themselves in this position. with that, i yield back, mr. president. okay.
cap on fsa contributions of $2500. that tax, that language, is found on page 1959 of the senate bill, and that will hinder the growth of those plans, and which encourages americans to consider quality and price when they purchase health care. and let me just say under hsa plan, premiums increase just 1.3% for individuals in 2007-2008 and declined 5.4% for families in that same period. and when people switch from a ppo, preferred provider organization, to a health savings account, their premiums declined by an average of $3800. now, another concern i have is the senate bill which on page 982 creates an unelected board, charged with recommending even more medicare reductions, and if congress doesn t accept these recommendations, they