[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 154 (Thursday, October 22, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H11686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, with my apologies to Charlie 
Daniels, I have some new words for one of his songs, and it goes like 
this:
  Democrats went forth from Washington carrying a bill they wanted to 
seal. They were in a bind because they were way behind and looking for 
some doctors to deal.
  You may think your health care is in pretty good shape, but give the 
Dems their due. They're willing to bet a fiddle of gold against 
medicine sold because they think they know better than you.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to deliver a message to physicians and 
their patients across our great Nation. Don't be fooled by political 
attempts to buy off your support for a bill which the American people 
have already rejected. Despite the President's claim that health care 
reform will not add to the deficit, there is one very large problem: 
Medicare physician payment reform.

                              {time}  2015

  Just yesterday, Democrats in the other body attempted to force 
through a bill which purported to fix a fundamental flaw in the way 
Medicare pays physicians. Attempting to move this legislation outside 
of the context of a health care reform package only underscores the 
fact that the fix is not paid for, will add to the backs of all 
American taxpayers, and is being used as a political bait-and-switch to 
lure providers into supporting a flawed health care reform bill that 
has already been rejected by the people.
  President Obama has made repeated promises that he will not sign a 
health care bill that ``adds one dime to our deficit, either now or in 
the future, period.'' By that very logic, the bills that are now 
pending in the House and the Senate are dead on arrival if President 
Obama wishes to keep his promise to the American people.
  The problems with the sustainable growth rate, commonly referred to 
as SGR, have forced this body to act repeatedly to override detrimental 
cuts to physician reimbursement that is prescribed by this flawed 
formula. At the very core of this issue is patient access to physicians 
which literally hangs in the balance. If these cuts are allowed to 
occur, seniors will face an unprecedented loss of access to care, and 
doctors will be unable to continue to treat seniors when payment rates 
are far below the cost of providing care.
  With a looming 21.5 percent reduction in reimbursement scheduled to 
go into effect at the end of this year, it is not surprising that the 
administration would use this political leverage to advance an agenda 
for health care reform that on its own merit has been and continues to 
be rejected by many of the American people.
  Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health of Great Britain, when asked 
how he convinced his country's physicians to go along with the 
government takeover of health care, said, ``I stuffed their mouths with 
gold.'' Mr. Speaker, this Congress and the Obama administration are 
attempting to do the same with fool's gold. Instead of being honest and 
forthcoming with the American people, the administration and Democratic 
leadership in Congress are choosing simply to ignore the cost of fixing 
SGR using budgetary games that will add another $250 billion to the 
Federal deficit. Clearly, dimes aren't being added to the deficit, 
hundreds of billions of dollars are. This, of course, is in addition to 
billions of new taxes on individuals and small businesses and cuts to 
popular Medicare programs like Medicare Advantage.
  What is at stake is our ability as a Nation to enact meaningful 
reforms which drive down cost, improve quality, and increase access to 
health care coverage of Americans by their own choosing. In fact, CBO 
estimates that tort reform alone would save Americans over $54 billion 
over the next 10 years, and that's just one example. So much for 
bending the cost curve, though, because malpractice reform is being 
left behind to be fixed another day.
  So to my colleagues and physicians looking to strike a deal on that 
fiddle of gold, remember, it is not your own soul that this legislation 
will steal; it is the soul of health care in America.

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