(REMARKS AS PREPARED)

Today’s hearing is about two things.  The first is the large backlog in Social Security and SSI disability claims, and efforts to reduce it.  That is a big problem, which we should work to fix.  The second, and in the long run more important, thing this hearing is about is the plummeting credibility of our Democrat colleagues and the supposed “solutions” they have for this country.  There seems to have been adopted the axiom that anything that is wrong can be fixed by a big government program.  We are here today talking about one that is failing and we expect a vote this year on a government-run health care system that will also fail. 

I have a suggestion for our guests and viewers.  Take the press release announcing today’s hearing and substitute the words “health care service” for “Social Security disability” wherever they appear.  The title of the hearing would be “eliminating the health care service backlog.”  The background would discuss how “the backlog of claims for health care services has reached unprecedented levels.”  And the focus of the hearing would be on “the large backlog in health care services.” 

The reality is the backlogs and ultimately rationing of services plaguing Social Security’s disability claims system will be repeated – or worse – in a government-run health care system.  To deny that is to deny the existence of the problems we will hear about today.  Only the “backlogs” of the future won’t just mean people don’t get disability checks on time – it will mean people die waiting for treatment, or after receiving inadequate treatment.
   
I ask unanimous consent to insert in the record an article published last week about one hospital in England where “Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period at the National Health Service (NHS) hospital.” This led Prime Minister Gordon Brown to “apologize to all those people who have suffered from the mistakes that have been made."

Some mistakes.  The article notes how visitors "saw patients drinking out of flower vases they were so thirsty.”  I would like to remind you that about 30 years ago the British National Health Service approved the use of “administrative failure” as an acceptable cause of death for a death certificate.

Today’s hearing is a cautionary tale for those who think a government run health system will efficiently deliver medical services in a timely fashion.  It won’t.  If the government can’t adequately serve the 2.6 million Americans who annually apply for disability benefits today, what makes anyone think it will provide adequate health care services to 300 million Americans tomorrow?
 
Those who trust in this Congress to allocate just the right amount of social policy medicine to cure what ails us deserve the poor service they will surely get.

Last, let me point out that the two largest budget problems that we face as a nation are Social Security and Medicare.  Need we create more?

Will the same Congress that has, in the unanimous opinion of today’s testimony, underfunded Social Security’s disability process, be generous with a government health care bureaucracy or its doctor, nurse, and specialist employees?  What’s the evidence of that?  There is none.
-OVER-
Proposed Insert
“Britain apologises for 'Third World' hospital”
AFP - March 18, 2009

LONDON (AFP) — The British government apologised Wednesday after a damning official report into a hospital likened by one patient's relative to "a Third World" health centre.

Stafford Hospital in central England was found to have appalling standards of care, putting patients at risk and leading to some dying, according to a report on Tuesday.

Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period at the National Health Service (NHS) hospital, according to an investigation by the Healthcare Commission watchdog.

"We do apologise to all those people who have suffered from the mistakes that have been made in the Stafford Hospital," said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, questioned on the matter at his weekly grilling in the House of Commons.

Receptionists with no medical training were left to to assess patients arriving at the hospital's accident and emergency department, the report found.

Julie Bailey, whose 86-year-old mother Bella died in the hospital in November 2007, said she and other family members slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks because they were so concerned about poor care.

"What we saw in those eight weeks will haunt us for the rest of our lives," said the 47-year-old. "We saw patients drinking out of flower vases they were so thirsty.

"There were patients wandering around the hospital and patients fighting. It was continuous through the night. Patients were screaming out in pain because you just could not get pain relief.

"It was like a Third World country hospital. It was an absolute disgrace."

The British premier, who has trumpeted huge increases in spending on the NHS since his Labour party took office in 1997, said there were "no excuses" for what happened to patients at the hospital.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson said: "I apologise on behalf of the government and the NHS, for the pain and anguish caused to so many patients and their families by the appalling standards of care at Stafford Hospital.

"Patients will want to be absolutely certain that the quality of care at Stafford Hospital has been radically transformed, and in particular, that the urgent and emergency care is administered safely," he added.