[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 115 (Tuesday, July 28, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H8889-H8890]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HEALTH CARE PLAN OUGHT TO FIRST DO NO HARM

  (Mr. CONAWAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, there is no one on our side of the aisle 
who would argue that we have necessary reforms for this medical health 
care system that we all enjoy and we are mostly all alive because of. 
The comments to the contrary that this is totally broken, totally 
unworkable, as you know, are hyperbole, simply done to try to set a 
riot, I suspect.
  4.7 million jobs are estimated to be lost by this health care plan. 
That is a big number. But four or five of those jobs are at a long-term 
health care plan company in Llano, Texas.
  Steven Lange sent me an e-mail that says if he is required to put 
this 8 percent tax on his business, because it is a low-margin 
business, because he gets Medicare reimbursement for 90 percent of his 
revenues, he will be unable to pass that 8 percent increase for the 
cost of doing business along to his major customer, i.e., the Federal 
taxpayer. Because of that, he will have to cut his employee base.

[[Page H8890]]

  His employees take care of the most vulnerable, frail, and least 
capable people in our society, folks at the end of life, and cutting 
the service to them should be not something that we ought to do. 
Physicians in the group say ``first do no harm.'' I would argue that 
this health care plan ought to do the same thing.

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