[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. WALDEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WALDEN. Madam Speaker, I was a small business owner with my wife 
for nearly 22 years and I served on a hospital board, and I support 
reforming the health care system. In fact, I have offered up 
legislation to do that and supported other bills, but the way that this 
process is being mismanaged and misrun today is not the way to do 
health care reform. There isn't the transparency the American people 
deserve and that is now being denied by those in charge.
  We are reading in the press that the Senate bill, with all of its 
barnacles on it, may pass this House without ever having a stand-up 
``yes'' or ``no'' vote. That is outrageous.
  And what does that bill do and what do these bills do? They whack 
Medicare $500 billion. Thirty-eight thousand seniors in my district run 
the risk of losing the Medicare Advantage policies that they have.
  This is not the way to do health care reform. You should scrap the 
bill and start over on a bipartisan basis.
  I had two amendments to deal with rural health care issues adopted 
unanimously in the Energy and Commerce Committee, both of which, after 
the committee passed the bill out of the committee itself, were 
stripped out somewhere between the committee and the House floor, and 
the Democrats wouldn't even let me offer those amendments on the House 
floor again.
  Stop this process. Let's do it right.

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