[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19432-19433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. We need to know what the people who advise the 
President of the United States think and believe about health care 
reform, Mr. Speaker. Listening to the President's adviser's actual 
words I believe is very enlightening.
  This morning I read a column written by Betsy McCaughey, and I would 
like to quote from it extensively now. This is from a column dated July 
24, 2009. Ms. McCaughey wrote the following. She said, The health bills 
coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the 
hands of Presidential appointees. Government will decide, not the 
people, not their doctors, what our plan will cover, how much leeway 
our doctor will have, and what senior citizens will finally get under 
Medicare.
  But what is even more important, Mr. Speaker, are the actual words of 
the President's advisers on health care. Here are the words from one of 
the President's first advisers, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the 
White House Chief of Staff. He has already been appointed to two key 
positions: one is Health Policy Adviser at the Office of Management and 
Budget, the other is as a member of the Federal Council on Comparative 
Effectiveness Research.
  This is what Mr. Emanuel has written, and I quote, ``Vague promises 
of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, 
installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 
`lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for 
true change.''
  Isn't this what the Democrats have claimed we are going to find $500 
billion in savings for? The President's own adviser says this is just 
lipstick, this is just a paper covering, this isn't where the real 
savings are. Savings, the President's adviser writes, will require 
changing how doctors think about their patients. Doctors take the 
Hippocratic Oath too seriously, he writes. Now, hear me, Mr. Speaker, 
this is the President's adviser writing this, Doctors take the 
Hippocratic Oath too seriously ``as an imperative to do everything for 
the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.''
  But that is what the people want their doctor to do. But Emanuel 
wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patient and consider 
social justice, such as whether the money would be better spent on 
someone else. This is a horrific notion to our Nation's doctors, but it 
is a horrific notion to each American because doctors believe, as 
Americans believe, that social justice is given out one patient at a 
time.
  But the President's adviser, Dr. Emanuel, believes communitarianism 
should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be 
reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled. Care 
should be reserved for the nondisabled, not given to those who are 
``irreversibly'' prevented from becoming participating citizens. ``An 
obvious example,'' he said, ``is not guaranteeing health services to 
patients with dementia.''
  We just lost my father-in-law to dementia 2 months ago. I thank God 
that the doctors were able to alleviate my poor father-in-law's 
symptoms at the end of his life at age 85.

                              {time}  1945

  Apparently, under the Democrats' health care plan, my father-in-law 
would not have received the high quality of care that he received in 
his last 2 months of life. Or if you're a grandmother with Parkinson's 
or a child with cerebral palsy, watch out.
  In fact, the President's adviser defends discrimination against older 
patients. He writes: ``Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by 
age is not invidious discrimination. Every person lives through 
different stages of life rather than being a single age. Even if a 25-
year-old receives priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 now 
was previously 25.''
  These bills that are being rushed through Congress right now, maybe

[[Page 19433]]

even this week, are going to cut over $500 billion out of Medicare in 
the next 10 years, putting it on the backs of our State legislature to 
fill the gaps. Knowing how unpopular these cuts are, the President's 
Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has urged Congress to delete their own 
authority over Medicare to a new Presidentially appointed bureaucracy 
that will not be accountable to the public.
  Here is the President's next adviser, Dr. David Blumenthal. He 
recommends that we slow medical innovation in order to control health 
spending. You heard me right. He said let's slow medical innovation to 
control health spending. He has long advocated government health 
spending controls, although he concedes they are associated with longer 
waits and reduced availability of new and expensive treatment and 
devices, but he calls it debatable whether the timely care Americans 
get is worth the cost.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans need to wake up and read what the President 
and his advisers are saying. It may scare them to go to the phones and 
call their Members.

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