[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 58 (Thursday, May 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        ENACT HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, one of my constituents, Kenneth Zierler, 
M.D.'s Professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, shared with 
me a statement that appeared in the publication, ``Doctors, People and 
Government,'' by Dr. James Howard Means, chief of medical services, 
Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor of medicine at Harvard, 
and let me quote:

       The progress of medicine in the social and economic field 
     has been slow, halting, and uncertain in direction, and 
     constantly thwarted by special interests. All people, doctors 
     and patients alike, agree that medical care should be of the 
     best quality that our medical knowledge permits, and that it 
     must be dispensed with skill and judgment on the part of 
     doctors, but how it shall be equitably, efficiently and 
     economically disturbed to all people, and how it shall be 
     paid for, are highly controversial and emotionally charged 
     issues. Public discontent with the medical situation has been 
     boiling up for more than a quarter-century, Survey after 
     survey has disclosed a distressing amount of unmet medical 
     need in this, the most opulent nation on earth. The 
     introduction in Congress of health bill after health bill is 
     indication enough that our lawmakers have been aware that the 
     voters want something done to give them better medical care.

  The year of Dr. Means' statement? 1953. It is time for Congress to 
enact now health care reform that guarantees affordable private 
insurance for all Americans.

                          ____________________