[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 27181]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, as we are about to deal 
with this health care bill before Congress, many of us have still 
attempted to try to improve the bill. I offered three amendments to the 
Rules Committee last night, and they were rejected. One of them was to 
say: before we cut $500 billion out of Medicare, maybe we ought to fix 
it first.
  There is a great deal of savings that could come from Medicare if we 
used scientific, evidence-based medicine to help improve chronic care 
conditions and deal with many other programs. That was rejected. 
Instead, we will cut the money from Medicare.
  Another amendment I offered makes sure that if the Senate should move 
forward with their provision of allowing States to opt out, the States 
should also be able to opt out of paying the health care taxes. In 
other words, we should have no taxation without hospitalization. 
Instead, my fear is that high taxes will remain in the bill to the 
point where it is going to cost our economy more jobs and cost our 
small businesses more.
  There still is much to do in this bill, and it is not yet ready. I 
still hope there is time in the coming weeks to improve these bills and 
work on real health care reform.

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