Congressman John Yarmuth Speaks About Health Care

Congressman John Yarmuth Speaks About Health Care

By Theresa Camoriano

Louisville, KY

On Nov. 11, 2009, John Yarmuth addressed the Lyndon Area Business Association’s monthly luncheon, speaking primarily about health care. Yarmuth said Congress is currently operating in an environment similar to standing in quicksand and being nearly dysfunctional. He said he votes according to what he thinks best rather than what his constituents want, because he knows more than most of his constituents.

He then gave several examples to show that his constituents do not know what they are talking about.

One example was a woman who works for Jefferson County public schools, who told Yarmuth she does not want the government controlling her health care. Yarmuth said he had to explain to her that the government already controls her health care, since the school system, which is the government, pays for her health insurance. Yarmuth made no distinction between the local school district and the federal government or between a school system buying insurance for its employees on the open market and the federal government controlling the type of health insurance people have to buy or providing the insurance itself.

Yarmuth then laughed about another constituent who told him she did not want the government to see her tax return. Yarmuth said he wondered where she thought she sent her tax return, if not to the government. He did not suggest the possibility that the woman might just have been doing a poor job of expressing her real and very legitimate concern that she did not want her personal health information to be sent to the IRS, as it would under the current legislation.

Yarmuth also ridiculed people who “still believe in death panels”, which, he said, are not in the bill. He said that if there were death panels in the bill, he would be concerned about it, too. He did not mention the name of the panels that will be used to deny people treatment under the government system, resulting in the death of the patients, but they certainly are not called “death panels”.

Yarmuth’s arrogance was breathtaking.

The problem, according to Yarmuth, is that private health care costs are escalating out of control and Medicare will go bankrupt very soon, and we can either stand around and do nothing, as he says Mitch McConnell wants, which will make matters worse, or we can take the action proposed by the Democrats.

He believes the way to save Medicare is to put everyone into the system so the young people, who do not need much medical care, will be subsidizing the older people, who do need more medical care. He said he supports a single payer system but has no preconceived agenda and does not know what is the best way to go and would welcome any suggestions that would solve the problems.

On person asked why they do not put into their legislation that we can buy insurance across state lines. He answered that they would not want to interfere with the states’ ability to regulate insurance, and you would not want a bad insurance company to set up shop in a state where there is very little regulation and be able to sell garbage policies all over the country. After all, he said, while he is a supporter of businesses, and ran one himself for many years, businesses do need to be regulated by the government.

Yarmuth said it is unfortunate that our health insurance is tied to our employment, but that was a fluke from after WWII, when the federal government imposed wage and price controls and businesses offered health care as a benefit to get around those controls. He would prefer that individuals have their own individual policies that they could keep when they changed jobs, but he said it would be difficult to make that change very abruptly.

Several people asked why he thought we should put the federal government in charge of our health care when it can’t do a good job of anything. They pointed out that Social Security is bankrupt, Medicare is bankrupt, and the entire government itself is bankrupt. Yarmuth responded that government does some things well. He said FEMA did a good job in Louisville after the storm, nobody complains about the VA, and everyone he talks to tells him to keep up the good work he is doing; nobody approaching him on a personal level tells him they disagree with him. He said that, of course, there are letters and calls from organized groups who disagree with his position, but he discounts them somewhat, since they are organized. He asked whether those people want the people living at Hazelwood to go without care.

One woman said she works for a large company that can self-insure to keep costs down and asked why the government can’t allow small businesses to join together to self-insure and keep costs down. Yarmuth did not respond directly to that question but said that the current legislation will help small businesses by allowing them to buy policies under the government plan.

An attorney told Yarmuth that the U.S. Constitution protected liberty by granting the federal government only certain limited, enumerated powers, and health care was not one of those powers. The attorney then explained that the problems we currently have with health care are largely the result of government overstepping its proper constitutional bounds. For example, tying health care to employment was caused by government exceeding its proper bounds and interfering with the free market. Also, Medicare was created and put on an unsound financial footing by the government exceeding its proper constitutional bounds. The attorney reminded him that he had taken an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and then asked him a two-part question: First, what was his justification for continuing to act outside the scope of his proper authority under the Constitution, and, second, what did he think about the good old fashioned way of dealing with scoundrels by tarring and feathering them and riding them out of town on a rail?

The people in the room laughed.

Yarmuth was not amused. He said the question was very clever but his authority came under the commerce clause of the Constitution, and since everything involvs interstate commerce, Congress essentially has the authority to regulate everything. He also said that education also was not listed in Article 1, Section 8, and surely we all wanted the federal government to be involved in education.

It was clear that many people in attendance, mostly made up of small business people, are upset about what is going on in the government right now.