[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14900-14901]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   HEALTH CARE RATIONING COULD RESULT IN DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED 
                                KINGDOM

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, do we really want to nationalize 
health care and let it be run by the government? Well, here's what's 
going on in England with their nationalized system. Recently, a British 
medical ethics expert proclaimed that people who suffer from dementia 
have a patriotic duty to die. Baroness Warnock, the government medical 
adviser, says that ``the care dementia requires is very expensive and 
drains the government resources for health care.'' This government 
decision-maker says that people will ``soon be licensed to put others 
down if they are unable to look after themselves.'' She goes on, ``If 
you're demented, you're wasting people's lives, your family's lives, 
and you're wasting government resources.''

[[Page 14901]]

  Mr. Speaker, when the government controls health care, it's 
expensive, inefficient and ultimately provides poor care. In Britain, 
it results in the government's rationing of services. The government 
picks winners and losers in the United Kingdom, and the government 
picks who lives and who dies. That doesn't seem to be a healthy 
solution for health care.
  And that's just the way it is.

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