[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 26703-26704]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     HEALTH CARE AMENDMENTS REMOVED

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the health care bill we will consider this 
week spent 3 months behind closed doors. It started out with 1,000 
pages and came out with 2,000 pages. While you might think that nothing 
had been removed in those closed door sessions, you may be surprised to 
find out that bipartisan amendments already adopted at the committee 
level have been gutted or tossed out. Now Speaker Pelosi is saying that 
we don't need amendments on the floor since we already had that 
opportunity at the committee level.
  In the Energy and Commerce Committee, we adopted one amendment to 
ensure that the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research would not 
be used to ration health care. We also adopted another amendment that 
would have prevented the center from dictating to doctors what type of 
treatments they can offer. Why would these amendments be gutted or 
removed from the bill? The only conclusion is that the authors of the 
bill want to move us in the direction of government-rationed care.
  In Canada and Britain, similar boards are used to ration care and 
dictate how doctors treat their patients. Americans do not want 
government bureaucrats determining their treatments. They want those 
decisions left to doctors that they trust.

[[Page 26704]]



                          ____________________