Excerpted remarks by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to the APsaA Executive Council during the 1999 Annual Meeting.
When I travel and make speeches, I tell my staff, if we're paying for it out of our campaign funds, let's do this as cheaply as possible. I'll stay in Motel 6, in Red Roof Inn. What do I care? I'm only going to be there overnight. On the other hand, when I go to the hospital, I want to be pampered.
Now, the economists tell me it should be the reverse, that is if when I traveled, I stayed in the most luxurious hotel suite and spent a lot of money, that would be a good thing, that would add to the gross domestic product, that would be a sign of economic progress. But if I go to the hospital and spend more and make sure I get a single room, etc., etc., at a time when I'm stressed and frightened and discomforted, that's a bad thing and we want to reduce it. …
Why in the abstract do we have to reduce medical care? There were two arguments, particularly when we talk about publicly funded medical care. One was that the costs of medical care were a drag on the American economy and we could not be productive, and two, we were told that these costs were contributing too much to the government deficit. Well, today we have no government deficit, and our economy is outperforming every other economy in the world. …
The real reason officialdom wants to breach privacy is to get information on which to deny people services. That is especially the case when you are talking about services involving mental health [and] emotional issues, because the argument is of course that there is no X-ray here, no obvious physical indicator, therefore the fraud factor is greater and therefore they need to breach privacy. If we were adequately to fund medical services in this country, I believe the demand for breaching privacy would [be] substantially reduce[d].
My own view is that the single most important thing we can do for the social and economic health of this country is to provide a universal health care system with full coverage for all.