[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 110 (Wednesday, August 10, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, within the next 8 days, Americans have a 
very critical period in our history to face us. Now, in Washington we 
are certainly going to be in the center of that history. But it is 
going to be something that will, in the words of the Speaker of the 
Senate, affect every American. I think we all agree on that. That is 
why I believe it is very important for us as we begin the debate on 
health care on the floor to look at it very cautiously.
  Today at 6:30 we were supposed to get a copy of the House bill, the 
Clinton-Gephardt bill. We will don't have it. The Clinton-Mitchell 
version has been introduced in the other body. Here we don't have it. 
The other bill in the Senate is 1,400 pages long. Our bill over here 
may be 800 pages, it may be 1,600 pages. We still don't have the bill. 
Tomorrow is Thursday. A week from tomorrow we are supposed to be voting 
on this bill.
  I like to read. I stay up late often at night reading books. But I 
don't know if I am going to be able to read an 1,800 page health care 
bill.
  I do have some concerns that I wanted to submit in terms of a 
government-sponsored insurance program, governments-sponsored medicine, 
which when we talk about universal health care, that is basically what 
we are going to have, because you cannot have universal health care 
without an oversight committee making sure that everybody in America 
has health care, and that oversight committee is the Federal 
Government. And, as I understand it, the bills that we are considering 
will have this National Health Care Board in them. So I think you could 
certainly make the argument that this is socialized medicine we are 
debating.
  With that, I wanted to read a letter by one of my constituents, Mrs. 
Angela Hine of Savannah, GA. She wrote this letter to me and said.

       I appreciate your stand against socialized medicine and 
     would like to share some of my experiences with government-
     controlled health care in England. In November 1984 I was to 
     see socialized medicine at work firsthand.

  She talks about some of the things that goes on. I am going to try to 
skip parts of the letter. She says,

       My aunt was having a bad heart attack in November of that 
     year. She went to see her.
       Upon arriving in England, I immediately went to the 
     hospital. On the way I was told my aunt had been in the men's 
     ward as no beds were available when she was admitted, but now 
     she had been moved to the women's ward. I stood in the 
     doorway of that ward and couldn't believe my eyes. There were 
     several beds in the ward. Curtains separated each bed. The 
     toilets were at the end of the ward. A doctor had been 
     assigned to her and had been taking car of her for many 
     years. Upon her return home she had a visit from her regular 
     doctor, who commented to me that if I brought her back to the 
     United States, she could probably live another ten years, but 
     she would never make it under the current system.

                              {time}  1950

  Then she talked about in a previous visit she went to see her aunt 
and she had an inflamed eye. Her lower eyelid turned inward and the 
lashes irritated her eyeball. She had been given an eye clean by her 
doctor, but it was obvious that she needed to see a specialist.
  After several phone calls and pleadings for her condition, I was 
finally able to get her to a specialist where surgery was performed to 
correct the problem.
  She talked about a cousin of hers that had a husband who was treated 
in England under the socialized medicine over there for a hernia, 
finally, when that did not work, the doctor set up an appointment with 
a specialist and by the time they determined that his problem was not a 
hernia but cancer, it was too late. The cancer had already spread and 
he died shortly thereafter.
  She goes on to talk about in 1985 returning to England and visiting 
her aunt again and how the horrible conditions of the hospital were 
just very sad and distressing and not just for the aunt but for the 
patient.
  I want to say that let us just say that even if the quality is the 
same under socialized medicine, the relationship is not. We are talking 
about human beings here. So I think it is very important to remember 
that.
  This is something, though, that I think one of the lines she was 
talking about giving her aunt morphine for the pain and one of the 
British doctors said to her in the hall, he said,

       We could have helped her live another two or three years, 
     but as she is 88 years old and lived a good life; what is the 
     point?

  That was directly from a doctor's mouth.
  I do not want government doctors telling me that my loved ones, my 
parents, my grandparents, just because they are 88 years old, they are 
going to get less than the best service. I do not want that decision, 
those critical family decisions to be made by health care bureaucrats 
running our family.
  Yet that is the experience that Mrs. Hines had with her family. I 
will just summarize her letter.

       Socialzied medicine is not a success as the media and 
     certain politicians are saying. In fact, it is a disaster and 
     should be voted down at all cost. The American people need to 
     urgently study the plan that is now being considered for 
     America. If this form of medicine is brought to the law, the 
     people are in for a rude awakening.

  I think that this letter, which is the authentic issue, I would like 
to also say, I have got many, many letters like this, has a lesson for 
us. So as we debate health care, we need to know exactly what it is we 
are voting on.
  Are we voting for socialized medicine? I think if we were voting on a 
Mitchell type plan or a Clinton type plan, certainly we would be voting 
on socialized medicine. But as of right now, we do not have a bill. We 
are going to have 8 days to read it.
  I hope, Madam Speaker, that we get the bill tomorrow and that we all 
spend the weekend reading up on it so that the American people know 
that their representatives have voted intelligently and with full 
knowledge of what is in the fine print.

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