[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17663-17664]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            GOVERNMENT INTRUSION INTO THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

  (Mr. BROUN of Georgia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, Americans are hurting because of 
the high cost of health care. I am a medical doctor. We need to fix the 
system. It is

[[Page 17664]]

affecting everybody. It is health care financing that is the problem. 
Why are health care expenses so high?
  In my rural south Georgia medical practice, I had a lab. Congress 
passed a bill called CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, 
that shut down my lab. Prior to being shut down, if a patient came to 
see me with a red, sore throat and running a fever, I would do a CBC, a 
complete blood count, to see if they had a bacterial infection and thus 
needed antibiotics, or a viral infection where antibiotics are not 
going to help. I charged $12 to do the test in 5 minutes. CLIA shut my 
lab down. I had to send patients across the way to the hospital, 2 to 3 
hours at $75.
  It is government intrusion into the health care system that has 
caused this high cost. We have got to get the government out of it. 
This public option is going to force everybody from their private 
insurance over to a public insurance where the system is already 
broken, where we are having rationing of care and where a government 
bureaucrat is going to make health care decisions for you. The American 
people need to stand up and say ``no'' to this public option.

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