[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 107 (Thursday, July 16, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H8274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE COST AND DANGERS OF THE GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF OUR HEALTH CARE 
                                 SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, today in the Energy and Commerce Committee 
we started having hearings on President Obama and Speaker Pelosi's 
bill, the proposal to create a government takeover of our health care 
system. I think the components of this bill and some of the things that 
have been talked about need to be discussed here on this House floor 
because the bill itself will actually lead to rationing of health care 
for Americans across this country. The bill will absolutely raise taxes 
on every American in this country and every small business in this 
country. In fact, there are over $580 billion in new taxes in this 
bill. This bill was just filed earlier this week. The Congressional 
Budget Office hasn't even been able to do a full assessment of it. 
There was a meeting held yesterday in the Energy and Commerce Committee 
with the CBO. Unfortunately the chairman decided that that meeting 
would be held in secret. He did not allow the media to come in. He 
didn't allow the public to have access through the Internet or through 
television to see what the head of the CBO had to say. You know, maybe 
if somebody supports this government takeover, I can see why they might 
want to try to hide the details from the public because the details 
that start to come out are showing the true cost to the American people 
and the true dangers of going into this government takeover of our 
health care system. I think the people ought to know what those details 
are. I think when you're talking about a bill this massive, a bill that 
is so enormous, probably one of the biggest transformations of 
government--and in an administration that has had many, many attempts 
to try to take over different aspects of our lives, this may be the 
biggest one.
  We have a chart right here that we've put together which actually 
shows the organizational structure of this new government takeover. If 
government is allowed to take over the health care system based on the 
bill that President Obama and the Speaker and her top lieutenants in 
this House and in the Senate have filed, this is the structure of what 
government-run health care would look like.
  There are a number of points that I think are important to go 
through. You hear President Obama talking a lot about, if you have the 
health care you like, you get to keep it. Now that sounds great. I 
agree with that. The problem is, the bill that President Obama and 
Speaker Pelosi and others filed takes away your health care. It allows 
a government czar--and unfortunately they've created so many czars. The 
government is running the insurance companies. The government is 
running banks right now. The government is running car companies. And 
the government is not doing a real good job of it. And now the 
government wants to run the health care system in this country. If you 
look at this organizational chart, you will see a whole lot of Federal 
agencies interfering in the relationship between a patient and their 
doctor.
  Now these are the people that are saying that the government won't 
tell you when you can go see your doctor. Everywhere in this 
organizational chart and everywhere in their thousand-plus page bill 
they're giving this new health care czar the ability and the power to 
interfere between the relationship of a patient and their doctor. If 
you like the health care plan you have, there's actual language in this 
bill that allows this health care czar that's created, it gives this 
government bureaucrat in Washington the power to tell your company, if 
you like your health care, the government can now take away, literally 
disqualify your company's health care plan from being eligible and 
force you onto this government-run plan. They have taxes that cover all 
different aspects of life. They tax businesses, $583 billion in taxes 
on working people in this country. There's actually--and this was 
verified yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office--$29 billion in 
new taxes on uninsured people. Now the real irony of that is, the real 
reason that they're bringing this bill--over 300 million Americans 
participate in health care today, and there is a number of uninsured 
people. Some people say the number is 45 million. Others have narrowed 
it down, when you remove the illegal aliens, when you remove people 
that just choose not to get health care who are eligible, the real 
number of uninsured people has been honed down to about 7 million 
people, and that's a number we should go address. Health care needs to 
be reformed, and there are a lot of bipartisan approaches to reform 
that system. But you reform something that's broke. You don't blow up 
the whole system that's working.
  In America we've got probably the best medical care in the world. 
People who have government-run systems, like Canada, like England, the 
citizens that have the means actually come to America to get care 
because our system is so good, even with the flaws. So let's go address 
those flaws. But you don't set up a system like this, some Byzantine 
system of bureaucrats and czars that are going to tell you which doctor 
you can see, to take over our health care system. Unfortunately we have 
got a debate started; and hopefully the public gets involved in this 
because when you look at the taxes, literally $29 billion of taxes on 
uninsured people when the bill was supposed to be designed to address 
the uninsured. When you look at small businesses and the impact on 
small businesses and middle-class families, in the bill they literally 
allow taxes on people making less than $50,000. This is a bill that 
needs important debate. Hopefully people will look at the details, and 
we can defeat it.

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