[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17834]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DEMOCRAT HEALTH REFORM

  (Mr. GINGREY of Georgia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, yesterday House Democratic 
leadership held a press conference to introduce their health care 
reform legislation. As a physician who has practiced medicine for more 
than 30 years, I have major concerns that this plan will ultimately put 
a government bureaucrat in between patients and their doctors and 
eventually lead to a one-size-fits-all health care system where the 
government decide what treatments are necessary for patients. When 
money gets tight, this leads to rationing of care and long waiting 
lists for patients. We've already seen the pilot of this program. It's 
called TennCare. Just ask the Democratic governor of Tennessee what 
it's done to the budget in their State.
  I want to read just a sentence of testimony from a Canadian doctor 
who has seen firsthand the consequences of a single-payer system on his 
patients.
  ``What we have in Canada is access to a government state-mandated 
wait list. And the wait lists are long, the patients are languishing 
and suffering on wait lists. Our own Supreme Court of Canada has stated 
that patients are actually dying as they wait for care in Canada.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is not the sort of health care reform that the 
American people want or need.

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