[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16946]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE BABIES ARE EXPENDABLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, a critically ill baby was born in 
Canada just last month. Her name is Ava Isabella Stinson. She was born 
13 weeks premature and weighed only 2 pounds. Unfortunately, Canada 
rations health care. And since the government must grant permission for 
one to have health care access, Ava was unable to get the treatment she 
needed to survive.
  Shortages and rationing under a government system means waiting 
lists. There was no room at the government hospitals for special needs 
babies. Not in the entire province of Ontario, Canada. Little Ava had 
no time to be on a waiting list.
  Fortunately for her, Ava's parents were able to quickly transport her 
to Buffalo, New York. Little Ava's life was saved by the best doctors 
in the world right here in America.
  News reports say that the neonatal intensive care unit in Ontario, 
Canada, is closed to new patients half of the time. Half of the time, 
Madam Speaker. That doesn't happen in the United States. A case like 
Ava's is not unusual in Canada. Babies with special needs, like being 
born early, are usually sent to America for care.
  Autumn, Brooke, Calissa, and Dahlia Jepps were born in America to 
Canadian parents back in 2007. The girls are doing just fine now. They 
are an extremely rare set of identical quadruplets. There was no room 
for them in any neonatal facility in all of Canada. Their parents flew 
to Great Falls, Montana, from Calgary so they could be born safely in 
America. Think about that for a minute. Great Falls, Montana, a city of 
56,000 people, offers better access to health care than Calgary, a city 
of over a million people. Why? Government rationing in Canada.
  Government control of health care means less access to health care, 
unless you are on the government special favorites list. Anyone who has 
tried to find a doctor or a specialist who uses Medicare knows exactly 
what that's like.
  Bureaucrats try to tell us that more babies survive under government-
run health care. They cite higher infant mortality rates in other 
countries as proof. But these countries skew the statistics. Babies 
born in some countries are considered stillborn unless they survive 
longer than 24 hours. You see, they don't count. In Canada, if a baby 
weighs less than 500 grams when born, that's about a pound, and the 
baby doesn't survive, they don't count it as a baby. The government 
calls these babies ``unsalvageable.'' Not able to be saved. 
``Unsalvageable.'' What a word.
  There's a lot of truth in the use of that word because under a 
government-run health care system, these babies just aren't worth 
saving. They are expendable. But they are saved in America. At least 
for now.
  Madam Speaker, the health care debate in America is literally a 
matter of life and death. It's not about improving quality. America's 
health care system offers the best quality in the world. That's why 
everybody comes here.
  But when the government runs a health care system, it's all about how 
much it costs and who the special favorites of government are. Also, 
government-run health care doesn't pay the doctors or nurses enough to 
stay in business. That means health care is rationed because there 
aren't enough doctors to go around. Government then decides who gets 
treatment and who just loses out. Like the medical ethics expert in 
Britain I talked about earlier today. She is a government 
decisionmaker, and she says some of the elderly just have a duty to 
die. In Canada the government lets special needs babies born early just 
die because they apparently aren't worth the cost of saving. So now the 
elderly and certain babies are not important enough to be saved under 
socialized medicine.
  In a government-run system, the government decides who gets treatment 
in medicine and who doesn't. That means the government decides who 
lives, who dies.
  The government does not have the moral right to make those decisions. 
Not one of the politicians who want to force America into a government-
run health care boondoggle is going to be denied treatment or medicine. 
Not one of them. Like the book ``Animal Farm'', which had the 
philosophy all are equal, but some are just more equal than others. 
That's not what America is all about. It's the age-old struggle of 
freedom over tyranny.
  When government bureaucrat gatekeepers have control over who lives 
and who dies in America, freedom is the first casualty. Just ask the 
elderly and the babies of Canada and England.
  And that's just the way it is.

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