[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 19664-19665]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, if you wonder why health care reform is 
so hard, look at the rhetoric surrounding efforts to help senior 
citizens and their families cope with end-of-life decisions. It has 
morphed into something that has been, I think, rather sad. I was both 
angry and put off, I must say, in the references to section 1233. Today 
in the Washington Times

[[Page 19665]]

they cite a misrepresentation by Republican leadership that talk about 
this leading the path down to government-encouraged euthanasia.
  Yesterday, we heard one of our Republican colleagues talk about 
actually having the government--I want to be careful about this--that 
``seniors being in a position of being put to death by their 
government.''
  Mr. Speaker, looking at this legislation that is a result of a 
bipartisan effort to allow senior citizens and their families to know 
the choices that face them, nothing mandatory, no government 
bureaucrat, simply giving them the choice to have information. Shame on 
people who use senior citizens as a prop to try to scare people.

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