[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 166 (Wednesday, October 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10835-H10836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               REPEAL OF THE NURSING HOME PROTECTION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Deutsch] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DEUTSCH. Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the 5-minutes this 
evening for over an hour now, about an hour and a half, and I think one 
thing that anyone who has been watching or been listening can conclude 
is that neither side of this aisle has a monopoly on wisdom, and there 
really is both wisdom and ignorance on both sides of the aisle.

[[Page H10836]]

  I think that when you look at this bill that we are going to vote on 
tomorrow, there are things that I can support and that I do support in 
this bill, but there are some things that truly will cause unneeded 
suffering for Americans and really things that are just out of place 
when you look at the facts.
  Yesterday evening I talked about one of them. I talked about the 
Medicare program, the fact that the $270 billion in cuts has nothing to 
do with what the actuaries say. The 7-year actuarial life, in 12 of the 
30 years it has had a shorter actuarial life.
  Tonight I want to focus in on something that has no place in that 
bill, and that is, it is not in a couple of thousand page bill, it is 
really probably just a page and a half, and that is repealing the 1987 
Nursing Home Protection Act. That is one of the many things this bill 
does that really is unprecedented and really, truly tragic.
  Prior to 1987, I think there are many people who are listening and 
watching remember reading and seeing stories, really horrible stories, 
stories about nursing home patients being tied down in nursing homes, 
being in their own feces, in their own urine, being drugged so they 
would not move, nursing home residents really dying in nursing home 
facilities because of lack of fire exits, nursing home facilities that 
had no 24-hour staff, I mean, horror stories on, if not a weekly basis, 
definitely on a monthly basis throughout the country.
  There is a reason we do not hear those horrors today, because in 1987 
this Congress passed a law providing nursing home residents, the 
weakest of the weak, the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable in our 
society, protection against things like being tied down, like being 
drugged, like making sure that there was 24-hour nursing facility and a 
trained person in that facility, three meals a day, fire exits. You 
know, if that is overregulation, then I am for overregulation.
  But I do not think most Americans think that that is overregulation. 
I think most Americans think that that is sound public policy that 
really is in the public interest.
  Let me just go on in terms of what this regulation prevents from 
happening. I served in the State legislature for 10 years, from 1982 to 
1992. Prior to that I served as a director of a Medicare advocacy 
group, 1982 and 1981. During that period, about once a week I would get 
a call from either the spouse or the child of someone who was being 
evicted from a nursing home, and I will tell you, I remember as if it 
were today, those phone calls because I have never heard since really 
just the tragedy. You can imagine what it means, someone's spouse, 
their parent is being evicted from a nursing home, and they called me 
and they asked me to do something. My response had to be there was 
nothing I could do, because the law did not protect those people either 
in Florida or in the United States. That does not exist today. 
People cannot be evicted from nursing homes in the United States of 
America today. No one gets those calls in the United States of America 
today.

  The tragedy that happened to thousands, tens of thousands of families 
in this country, does not happen, and in fact, the facts are that there 
was just lots of empirical evidence that was pointed out in hearings 
for this legislation in the 1980's that people died when evicted from 
nursing homes. That does not happen today, because of a piece of 
legislation that is going to be repealed tomorrow by that bill, and it 
should not be.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I propose this as 
an amendment to the Committee on Rules, my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle say, well, the States can do better; the States know 
better; we want to return this issue to the States.
  You know, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle really have 
selective memory when they think about the States doing better. They 
pick and choose the issues they think the States can do better on.
  Two hundred years of tort law in America, forget that, the Federal 
Government knows best in the areas of medical malpractice. We are going 
to obliterate 200 years of States' rights in that area. My colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle, there is one mandate, one State mandate 
in the Medicaid bill, in this bill. There is one State mandate, and 
that State mandate is that States cannot choose to spend money for 
abortions.

                              {time}  2045

  It is an amazing concept when you think about that. Mandating that 
issue, which they prioritize, but they say we cannot mandate, that 
there cannot be nursing home evictions.
  I urge my colleagues tomorrow to really defeat this legislation for 
this and other reasons, and hopefully that people who are listening and 
watching will call their Members to let them know this is a provision 
in this bill that they do not want to see enacted.

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