Health Care Quotes

…we urge you to be sure that these proposals don’t take away the incentive for unemployment claimants to accept part time and temporary jobs when permanent jobs are unavailable. At present, claimants resist such jobs, because earnings from 2 or 3 days of work will often disqualify them from any unemployment benefits. If claimants] lose their health insurance for weeks in which they are disqualified from unemployment benefits, they will have even less incentive to accept work when it is available.

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Eric J. Oxfield, Employee Benefits Attorney, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
04/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

We also oppose those proposals that would increase employers’ labor costs. Mandating through tax penalties that employers carry laid-off workers for some specified period or open health plan enrollment to spouses, or contribute to an assigned-risk pool, would place them in double financial jeopardy. Employers’ response could be to drop their health care plans altogether and/or lay off more workers.

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Jan Peter Ozga, Director of Health Care, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
04/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

Many options already exist to provide unemployed persons with health insurance or protection against health care costs. These include: continuous coverage provisions in many employer-paid health care plans; the conversion privilege offered in many of these same plans: coverage under a spouse’s or other relative’s plan; and the social safety net, Medicaid.

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Jan Peter Ozga, Director of Health Care, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
04/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

In our view, any program created should be temporary. It should remain in place for a limited period of time with a sunset provision. Such a requirement would establish the need for Congress and the nation to reevaluate the continuation of or modifications to the program on a regular basis rather than creating another ‘untouchable’ entitlement program.

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Statement of Joseph F. Boyle, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Trustees, American Medical Association, Chicago, Accompanied by Dr. James Sammons, Executive Vice President and Harry Peterson, Director, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
04/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

As we devise legislation of this kind, my observation through the years has been that we tend to work at the Federal end of the chain. We will put the money in the Federal end, and it’s almost always on the assumption that the party at the very other end gets his full cost. If there ever was a circumstance under which you wanted the various parties and participants to share, this is the circumstance. I would again come back to fostering and leaving opportunities open for encouraging initiatives on the part of the insurance underwriters, providers, and communities to share in the cost of this problem. Don’t make it so easy. Don’t just give 100 percent Federal money. Somebody has got to start giving on the chain.

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Bruce Cardwell, Executive Vice President, Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association, Chicago,Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
343204/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

Let us go on the record as saying we believe that this program should be temporary. Clearly, we share with the chairman [Senator Bob Dole] the belief that the general economy is not by tomorrow going to turn upside down, and during the time in which it takes to do that, this program should be in place. But it should indeed be temporary. It should have a limited scope. Indeed, we are not in a position in this country today to institute another Cadillac-care program when it is not necessary…Certainly we do not wish to see this become another entitlement program…”

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Dr. James Sammons, of the American Medical Association, Joseph F. Boyle, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Trustees, American Medical Association, Executive Vice President and Harry Peterson, Director, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
342604/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

We believe that the experience of the last few years teaches that in addressing problems of health care financing we should try at all costs to avoid the establishment of new Federal or State bureaucracies and regulatory regimes. We, further, should avoid the creation of new Government entitlement programs, the addition of new financial burdens on the Federal Health care budget, or the distortion of the marketplace by eliminating choice or reducing competition in health care.

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Don Bliss, Esq., National Association of Manufacturers, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
343304/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

…we think that intervention should be limited….Our experience tells us that through Blue Cross and Blue Shield and also through a good deal of coverage offered by the commercial carriers there are opportunities for individuals who have been laid off to avail themselves of insurance of one kind or another in many cases.

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Bruce Cardwell, Executive Vice President, Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association, Chicago,Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
343104/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

All told, some 16 million or more jobs will be needed in the next seven years. The statistics on the recovery from the 1974 recession indicate that such job creation is achievable. The major problem is to accomplish this goal through sound economic recovery and growth without increasing inflation or discouraging hiring by adding to labor costs.

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Jan Peter Ozga, Director of Health Care, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Testimony, Senate Finance Committee.
344104/21/1983 | Full Details | Law(s): COBRA

A piece of the roof came off with Medicare. Now the whole structure [of American Medicine] is threatened as we knew it would be sooner or later….Some people think that people are entitled to health care as a matter of right, whether they work or not. This is just as absurd as saying that food, clothes, and shelter are a matter of right- one step further than that is a revolutionary system bordering on communism.

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Dr. Edward R. Annis, former President of AMA, The New York Times, referring to Senator Edward Kennedy's push for universal healthcare.
10/14/1971 | Full Details | Law(s): Universal Healthcare

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