[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 48 (Wednesday, March 26, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2649-H2650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          OBAMACARE'S IMPACTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Alabama (Mr. Brooks) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROOKS of Alabama. Madam Speaker, I hope my remarks will help 
America better understand the damage that ObamaCare inflicts on 
patients, health care, the economy, and jobs.
  Today, I share a letter by Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur, Alabama, that 
details Washington's damage to America's health care. On March 23, 
2014, Dr. Gill wrote me:

       Dear Congressman Brooks,
       As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against 
     what I can best characterize as Washington's war against 
     doctors.
       The medical profession has never before remotely approached 
     today's stress, work hours, wasted costs, decreased 
     efficiency, and declining ability to focus on patient care.
       In our community alone, at least six doctors have left 
     patient care for administrative positions, to start a 
     concierge practice, or retire altogether.
       Doctors are smothered by destructive regulations that add 
     costs, raise our overhead, and ``gum up the works,'' making 
     patient treatment slower and less efficient, thus forcing 
     doctors to focus on things other than patient care and reduce 
     the number of patients we can help each day.
       I spend more time at work than I have at any time in my 27 
     years of practice, and more of that time is spent on 
     administrative tasks and entering useless data into a 
     computer rather than helping sick patients.
       Doctors have been forced by ill-informed bureaucrats to 
     implement electronic medical records (EMR) that, in our four-
     doctor practice, costs well over $100,000-plus in continuing 
     yearly operational costs, all of which does not help take 
     care of one patient while driving up the cost of every 
     patient's health care.
       Washington's electronic medical records requirement makes 
     our medical practice much slower and less efficient, forcing 
     our doctors to treat fewer patients per day than we did 
     before the EMR mandate.
       To make matters worse, Washington forces doctors to 
     demonstrate ``meaningful use'' of EMR or risk not being fully 
     paid for the help we give.
       In addition to the electronic medical records burden, we 
     face a mandate to use the ICD-10 coding system, a new set of 
     reimbursement diagnostic codes.
       The current ICD-9 coding system uses roughly 13,000 codes. 
     The new ICD-10 coding system uses a staggering 70,000 new and 
     completely different codes, thus dramatically slowing doctors 
     down due to the unnecessary complexity and sheer numbers of 
     codes that must be learned. The cost of this new ICD-10 
     coding system for our small practice is roughly $80,000, 
     again driving up health care costs without one iota of 
     improvement in health care quality.

[[Page H2650]]

       Finally, doctors face nonpayment by patients with 
     ObamaCare. These patients may or may not be paying their 
     premiums, and we have no way of verifying this. No business 
     can operate with that much uncertainty.
       On behalf of the medical profession, I ask that Washington 
     stop the implementation of the ICD-10 coding system, repeal 
     the Affordable Care Act, and replace it with a better law 
     written with the input of real doctors who will actually 
     treat patients covered by it.
       America has enjoyed the best health care the world has ever 
     known. That health care is in jeopardy because physicians 
     cannot survive Washington's ``war on doctors'' without 
     relief.
       Eventually the problems for doctors will become problems 
     for patients, and we are all patients at some point.
       Sincerely yours,
       Dr. Marlin Gill of Decatur, Alabama.

  Madam Speaker, America should heed the warnings of Dr. Marlin Gill of 
Decatur, Alabama. Failure to do so risks unnecessary patient deaths 
while destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.

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