Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Brown from South Carolina, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation and want to remind the American public, Mr. Speaker, if I could speak to them, that we have a tremendous Federal debt and deficit that's growing every moment that this Congress is in session.

We have a tremendous amount of resources all across this country in forests, in Federal property; and I believe we must be good stewards of our environment. It's absolutely critical. In fact, we are charged from a biblical perspective to be good stewards of our environment, and I am a conservationist of the first order. In fact, I began my political activism being involved in the conservation movement. I'm a life member of many conservation movements such as the Wild Sheep Foundation, the Safari Club International, where I was a political action vice president, political affairs vice president for Safari Club International. I'm a member of Quail Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited, and I can go on and on. So my conservation credentials are very numerous.

But we have Federal property all over this country where the Federal Government is not managing it properly. The Park Service can't take care, by their own admission, of the Federal National Park System today. The Forest Service does a much better job than the Park Service does in managing its properties. But we have national forests all over this country that have timber growing. It's a renewable resource.

Mr. Speaker, we can handle some of this Federal deficit and debt by starting to manage these Federal properties in a more responsible, scientific manner that will not harm the environment, will not harm the properties, will not harm--actually will help the wildlife.

So, Mr. Speaker, as I rise to support this legislation, I ask this House, I ask this Congress, I ask the American people to start demanding good management practices of our natural resources, and that's going to include good, responsible wildlife management; that's going to include considering hunting on all Federal properties as a management tool which is absolutely critical in proper wildlife management.

So, Mr. Speaker, I do rise in support of this legislation. I assume that it will pass, and I hope that it does. But we need to look beyond that and start being good stewards of our environment, and we have not been.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I'm a physician, and I'm concerned about what goes on in people's homes and the safety in those homes. And I commend the sponsor of this bill for introducing it here before the House.

I think the American people are more concerned about other things now than just home safety. That is certainly everyone's concern, but I think their economic concerns are extremely important to the American people also, Madam Speaker. I also believe that energy independence is of extreme concern to the American people too. Republicans have offered alternatives to the tax-and-cap bill that this House passed just a couple of weeks ago. It is over in the Senate. In my opinion, it should die over there.

The American people must stand up and understand how this is going to increase the cost of not only their energy sources, but it is going to increase the cost of everything that they buy. Out of every dollar that they spend, some of it is going to come to the Federal Government in the nature of an increased energy tax which is going to be disastrous.

We on the Republican side have introduced legislation that would make America independent. But that bill has not seen the light of day on the floor of this House. Why is that? It is because the Democratic majority and the leadership will not allow that to happen. I think if that bill were to come to the floor of the House of Representatives, and the American people were to see it, we would pass it. But if we passed it over this huge energy tax that is in the tax-and-cap bill, then the revenue would not be available to pay for the health care bill. The President recently said he needed that revenue to pay for the health care bill that he has promoted and that is being introduced this week in the House of Representatives, ``Obama Care.''

And Obama Care, as a physician, I can tell you is going to be disastrous for my colleagues and me and for our patients because it is going to insert a Washington bureaucrat between the doctor and the patient, and that Washington bureaucrat is going to be making health care decisions. It is going to be extremely expensive.

Just last night, I held a tele-town hall meeting and asked a question of the people on the line about what concerns them about this Obama Care program that is being proposed by the Democrat majority. Overwhelmingly, they were concerned about the cost, as well as Washington bureaucrats inserting themselves in health care decisions. They were overwhelmingly concerned about the taxes that are going to go up for everybody in this country.

There are a lot of tax increases that we already know are going to be in this bill because we have seen the draft. We understand we are going to have the bill today in final form, at least the final form before all the manager's amendments and before markups are done.

We have a lot of things going on here that the American people need to understand are going to be disastrous for them, for their health care and for their economy. It is going to hurt people. It is going to hurt people because the economy is going to fall just like we are concerned about falls and other things in our home and home safety.

Our grandchildren are going to live at a lower standard than we live today if we keep passing these bills. We have got unprecedented debt. We have got unprecedented deficits. Right now, the most abused credit card in this country today is this card, the voting card that Members of Congress use. This is a credit card that the Chinese are picking up the debt that we are creating with the use of this card.

Madam Speaker, we have to stop this egregious, outrageous spending that this Congress is doing. It is going to kill the American economy. It is going to destroy the health care system that is being proposed in this health care bill that is being presented today. We have got to stop it, Madam Speaker. So it is not just about home safety. It is about economic well being. It is about our children's future.

Madam Speaker, it just grieves me to see the direction that this country is going. It grieves me to know what my two grandchildren that I have now are going to have to face in the way of paying back the debt that we cannot pay, my children can't pay and that my grandchildren and their children probably are going to have a hard time paying too.

So, Madam Speaker, we are heading in a bad, bad direction. The American people need to stand up and understand what is going on and say ``no'' to Obama Care, ``no'' to tax-and-cap, the so-called ``cap- and-trade'' bill, and ``no'' to all of this increased debt and increased deficits which are going to take away jobs that we have already seen in tremendous job losses, take away jobs, and it is going to ruin the economy.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Will the gentleman yield?

Thank you, Mr. Akin. It was humorous to me-- actually, sad to me--because this Democrat, she said to me that all they're going to do is cover those who are not insured with this public option and give them the opportunity to buy into this public option if they don't have insurance. And I told her, How are you going to keep companies from canceling their insurance and from people being shifted over? That's going to increase the cost of insurance for everybody else, and so you're going to see just a continual shifting.

Isn't that, Dr. Roe or Mrs. Blackburn, isn't that what you all saw in Tennessee?

I thank Mr. Akin for yielding again to me.

I want to come back to something that my dear friend John Shadegg said where he is talking about cost. I just wanted to inject here something that happened in my medical practice when I was practicing down in southwest Georgia. And what I'm fixing to say is going to point out that government intrusion in the health care system is what has driven up the cost for everybody, whether they are private insurers or public insurers on Medicare, SCHIP or Medicaid.

Back a number of years ago, I was in private practice. I had a one- man office with several employees. And I had a fully automated lab in my office. A patient would come in to see me with a red sore throat, running a fever, aching all over, coughing, runny nose and white patches on their throat. In my fully automated lab, I would do a CBC, a complete blood count. I could do that in 5 minutes and charge $12.

Well, Congress passed a bill and signed into law what is called the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, or CLIA. It shut down my lab. It shut down every doctor's lab in this country. All the hospital labs had to get a waiver----

Anything, to do blood sugars and blood counts and those sort of things.

They shut it down. CLIA shut every doctor's lab in the country. Patients would come in with aching all over, a red sore throat, and so I would do a CBC to see if they had a bacterial infection and thus needed antibiotics, if there was a strep throat that might need a penicillin shot, or if they had a viral infection that could look exactly the same. And a viral infection is not helped by antibiotics. The teaching in the Medical College of Georgia and all of my training postgraduate has encouraged doctors not to overprescribe medications. It is costly. It increases the cost to everybody. Also, if people have viral infections, they don't need antibiotics. Actually, it is harmful to some patients.

So, I do a CBC, 12 bucks, 5 minutes. CLIA shut my lab down. I had to send patients across the way to the hospital. They got a waiver. It cost $75 and took 2 to 3 hours for one test. Now do you see what that does across the whole health care system? It markedly increased the cost.

Congress not just a few years ago passed HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act. That has cost the health care industry, thus insurance and all of us, billions of dollars. It has not paid for the first aspirin to treat the headaches it has created. It was totally unneeded legislation. It was totally unneeded because we could have done something to make insurance portable without going that route.

So, government intrusion into the health care system and Medicare policy is what has driven up the cost for everybody. And it comes back to what Mr. Shadegg was saying about asking a question, could any of us answer the question about has government's being involved in any area decreased the cost. And the answer is ``no.'' It has increased the cost markedly for the health insurance of everybody else. And it is going to in this too.

I just signed a pledge this afternoon to the American people that I will not vote for this bill until I read it, and I meant that. I don't sign pledges----

I hope they will, too.

I applaud the Blue Dogs for asking from the leadership. I hope they don't

hold their breath because I think they'll turn blue and die from hypoxia.

But I want to point out something that Dr. Gingrey was talking about that, and that Ms. Blackburn brought up very clearly. This tax increase on small business is going to cost jobs, not 1 or 2, not 10 or 20, not 100, but thousands of jobs, because small businesses all across this country are not going to be able to pay for the increased taxes that the Democrats are going to put on the back of small business men and women around this country. So many people are going to be out of work, and it's going to shift them over to the public plan. They're going to get free health care.

We have heard several of our colleagues say, if you think health care is expensive now, wait till you get it when it's free. It's going to be extremely expensive.

Okay. I'd like to speak to Mr. Shadegg's point there before he leaves if he could stick around a second.

I appreciate it.

In noting what Mr. Hoekstra is talking about and in going back to what Mr. Shadegg was talking about, I want to point out the reason there is such a difference in the survival rates for these two cancers. The American people need to look at it. It's not just because we're Americans. It's because, in those systems, people are put on waiting lists, as your prior chart noted, Mr. Shadegg. It is also because the government system won't pay for the new procedures, for the new medications. So it's because of delayed treatments, of delayed evaluations of lumps in a breast, because of delayed or denied services. That's going to come under this plan that the Democrats have proposed today. It's coming to every single American. That's the reason the survival rates are so much lower for prostate cancer and breast cancer. The thing is, and what's going to happen is, our survival rates are going to actually go down and match some of those others. The American people need to understand that. If I can speak to them, that's one thing that I would say. The delayed treatment and denied treatment is going to wind up killing people. That's what this plan is going to do. It's literally going to kill people.

Will the gentleman yield?

Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify this for all of us here in the House tonight, plus for the people who are watching on C-SPAN. This includes all cancers; is that correct?

That includes lung cancer; it includes stomach cancer or pancreatic cancer or muscle cancers, bone cancers, blood cancers, et cetera. That should be astonishing to the American public to look at those values. Please tell us about----

I want to applaud the gentleman from Arizona's efforts to put this plan together.

I want to point out something. We, as Republicans, are accused of being the ``Party of No'' by the folks on the other side, the Democrats. But I want to--if I could tell the American people this--I can't in the rules of the House--but the Republican Party is actually the Party of Know--K-N-O-W. We know how to fix things, and I congratulate Mr. Shadegg for putting together an alternative to present to the American public.

I'm working on one in my office also that's a little different from Mr. Shadegg's, and there are other plans being developed on the Republican side. We know how to fix it and to look to the free enterprise system to fix things and not look to socialism, which is what our colleagues on the Democrat side look to. They look to socialism, they look to central command, they look to a Washington bureaucrat to tell us how to run not only health care, but I want to also indicate we have had plans about a lot of things.

We had an energy plan. The American Energy Act that I was a cosponsor of--and I think probably every one of us here tonight were cosponsors-- that would have made America energy independent. We've developed on our Republican side plans to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes on small business and creating real jobs.

The Democrats' centralized plans that create a bigger Washington, more bureaucracy has not worked. Where are the jobs? But we had a plan on the Republican side that would have actually created jobs.

And over and over again, the Democrats that claimed that we are the Party of No, N-O, will only allow their plan to be presented to see the light of day here in this House. That's dictatorship, in my opinion.

We are the Party of Know, K-N-O-W.

It's 14 percent in many of my counties in the 10th Congressional District in Georgia.

This health care bill is going to put more people out of work. More people are going to be unemployed. And it's going to hurt the economy even more, which is going to mean more cost to the American taxpayers. So taxes are going to go up and the cost of health care is going to skyrocket.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I want to point out something in plain English, as Mr. Akin was just doing. We hear on the House floor here over and over again that there are 45 million or 47 million people that don't have health care in this country. That's false. It's a blatant falsehood that's being perpetuated on the floor of this House. Everybody in this country has access to health care. The question is where do they get it, who pays for it, and at what cost.

The reason everybody in this country has access to health care is because they walk into any emergency room in this country, and under Federal law, the emergency room doctor, the emergency room has to evaluate and essentially treat everybody who walks in. That's the reason if you walk into an emergency room in Augusta, Georgia, or Athens, or Elberton or anyplace in my district, you will see the emergency room filled with illegal aliens who are going there. The taxpayers of America are paying for their health care in the hospitals, and the hospitals are getting to the point where they can't continue it but it's because of Federal law that they have to treat these illegal aliens.

So everybody has access to health care. So we are really talking about two things in this health care debate, not one. It's not monolithic. We have health care system and the provision of health care on one side, which is absolutely the very best in the world, and we have health care financing on the other hand that is broken.

And we'll all agree that health care financing is broken, but it's broken because of government and government regulation and government intrusion in the health care system. And they want to make more intrusion into the system, which is going to make it more expensive. It's going to raise taxes on everybody in this country.

It's going to raise the cost of every single good and service in this country because it's going to be mandated to all businesses, so they're going to have to charge more for their goods and services. So everything's going to go up. Our economy is going to go down.

I can see the headlines a few years from now. Headlines: Obama lied, the economy's dead. And that's a potential that we have with this health care system. And it's absolutely critical the American public understand that it is going to be extremely expensive. It's going to increase costs to everybody, and it's going to raise taxes on small business so people are going to be put out of work because of this plan that's being introduced today.

Will the gentleman yield?

I heard just recently about a patient in Canada that had such severe knee pain that he was having to take narcotics. It took him over 1 year just to go see an orthopedic surgeon.

If a patient comes to see me and has knee pain, I pick up the telephone and call an orthopedic surgeon and I'll get them within a week or two. But it took this patient over 1 year to ever go see the orthopedic surgeon and to get the x rays that he needed to evaluate his knee pain. When he finally saw the orthopedic surgeon, the doctor said, Well, you need this surgery. And the Canadian said, Well, that's fine. Let's schedule it. He said, No, we have to put you on a wasting list.

So he came--I don't know if he came to one of your local hospitals there in Michigan--but he came to the U.S. to get his surgery done on his knee. And that's exactly what this government program is going to do to Americans. But where are we going to go if they indeed put this into place?

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

When I stood up, the Speaker, if I'm not mistaken, recognized me. Is that not correct?

When I said, ``Mr. Speaker,'' you said, ``The gentleman from Georgia,'' and then I made my motion. You didn't ask why I was standing. You just recognized me, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I came to talk about the health care problems here in America. I'm a medical doctor. I have practiced medicine for three-and-a-half decades. I'm an old-time general practitioner. I treat infants all the way to the elderly. My patients are like family. They're like friends. They are friends. They are family. And I'm very concerned about where we are going as a Nation.

Certainly health care in this country has become extremely expensive. In fact, I myself, prior to being elected to Congress, being a small businessman, could not afford a comprehensive health care insurance policy. I had a catastrophic health care policy because that's all I could afford. There are many small businessmen and women all across this country that are in the same category that I was in. Now, since I have been elected to Congress, I buy into the government health care insurance program that all Federal employees can buy into.

We hear from our President that everybody in this country should have a public option, an option that they can buy into. Last night my good friend John Shadegg in a Special Order was talking about the draft of the bill that Energy and Commerce is going to be looking at next week. And during Mr. Shadegg's discussion last night on this floor, he said that the public health care option is not an option at all. And, in fact, the American people, if I could speak to them, Mr. Speaker, I would ask them to look at what is being proposed and how quickly this major policy change is being brought to the forefront.

Next week on Tuesday, the Energy and Commerce Committee is going to start their process of looking at the health care reform bill. Tuesday they are scheduled to have opening statements by the members of the committee. Wednesday and Thursday they're going to have markup. And, Mr. Speaker, I don't think the American public quite understands that term. It's a term that we use, as you know, where the committee goes through a bill line by line, issue by issue, section by section, and amendments are offered, voted on, and are put in place in the final product.

Well, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee has decided to not go through the regular order process of letting the Health Subcommittee look at the bill. He wants the whole committee to do so. Why? Well, it's reported that the reason that he wants to do that is because he's concerned about the subcommittee's taking too much time and maybe not even passing out this bill.

The majority, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me, is trying to force this down the throats of the American people in a very expeditious manner. Why would they want to do that? Well, I think the American people, if they knew what was going on, Mr. Speaker, would understand that this major policy change is being hastened through the legislative process so that it can be put in place so that the American people don't have the light of day shed upon this bill so that the American people can say anything about it.

Over and over again, Mr. Speaker, in this House with these appropriation bills, we have seen a change, an historical change, of how regular order is carried out. Normally an appropriations bill is brought to the floor with an open rule. Both sides agree on amendments that are introduced. Both sides agree on time limits, and we can go through a regular order. But the majority has declined to allow that to happen. Even leadership, some of the leadership on the other side, reportedly, would like to do so. But the Speaker and the chairman are declining to allow that to happen.

So we're getting bill after bill presented to the floor that nobody has had the opportunity to read. The public can't read it. The Members of Congress can't read it.

We've had thousand-page bills, such as the nonstimulus bill that was presented by the President and was introduced in the dead of night, and we voted on it on this floor where no human being anywhere had had the opportunity to read that bill. No one, Mr. Speaker, had the opportunity to read that bill. It was 1,100 pages. Our leader, Mr. Boehner, had that large stack of paper and dropped it on the floor. No one had the opportunity to read that bill.

We don't have a health care bill. I have not seen it. No member of the Energy and Commerce Committee has seen it on either side, Democrat or Republican, because it has not been produced. Though Tuesday morning they're going to start opening statements on that bill.

We here in Congress have not seen the bill. We here in Congress have no way to evaluate the bill. We here in Congress have no way to understand what the bill says in totality and how we can introduce amendments to the bill to make it better. Democrats and Republicans alike are being denied their opportunity to allow amendments to all these appropriations bills and to a lot of the authorization bills, such as the tax-and-cap bill, which is going to be a disaster economically for America. This process is blatantly unfair. It's unfair to Democrats. It's unfair to Republicans. But most of all, it's unfair to the American people. The American people should demand better.

Our Speaker, when she came to office in the prior Congress, said we're going to have a new era of openness and honesty, high ethics, transparency. Nothing could be further from the truth. That's what went on in the last Congress and is particularly going on in this Congress. And we are having this health care reform bill being put together by just a small handful of the committee leadership and the leadership of this House, Democrats. The medical doctors, health care professionals, at least on our side, aren't even being consulted. We have, I'm not sure, 10 or 11 of us on our side. Not the first one of us has been consulted about what my patients and all of our patients need in health care reform.

We are being shut out of the process, and that's not fair to the American people, Mr. Speaker. The American people should demand more. They should demand openness. They should demand transparency.

We've had resolutions where we wanted to have at least 72 hours of every bill being posted on the Internet

so that the American people could look at those bills. The American people have been denied that opportunity by the leadership of this House and of the U.S. Senate. It's not fair. It's not fair to the American people.

We are having a major change in health care policy being shoved down the throats of the American people, Mr. Speaker. The American people need to rise up and say ``no'' to this cloaked-in-darkness process, where members of the public across this country should be able to take their reading glasses and put them on and read the bill, where Members of Congress should be able to take their reading glasses and put them on and look and see what's being proposed by the majority. The minority is being totally shut out of this process.

Now, we do know some things that are in the bill. And the American people need to understand what the ramifications of those things that are in the bill that we know about are all about.

The first thing, we hear all the time by the majority, we heard it during Special Orders, we've heard it during the 1 minutes this morning, we hear it over and over again in all the debate and discussion going around here in the House, about people need to have a public option. Well, the American people need to understand, Mr. Speaker, that that public option is going to deny them choices. It's going to put a bureaucrat, a Washington bureaucrat, between them and their doctor. And that Washington bureaucrat is going to make their health care decisions for them about what tests they can have, what medicines they can have, whether they can have surgery or not. And what it's going to do is it's going to shift people, as Mr. Shadegg was saying last night, over the next 5 years off their employer-based health care insurance over to a single-party payer government insurance.

We are told if people like their health insurance, fine, keep it. And most American people will say, yes, that's right, I like my American insurance policy that I have today. I don't like the insurance companies. I don't like the costs. But I'm satisfied with my insurance.

But, Mr. Speaker, if I could speak to each individual in America today, I'd warn them that, Mr. and Mrs. America, you're not going to be able to keep your private insurance. You're going to be forced into a government-run, socialistic medicine health care system where some Washington bureaucrat is going to tell you whether you can go to the hospital or not, whether you can get an MRI or not, whether you can have the new treatments for cancer or hypertension or diabetes. It's going to destroy the health care system that we know today.

We have the finest health care system in the world. That's the reason people from Canada come to America to get their health care, even when they could buy the private health care in their own country. But they come to the United States. People in Great Britain come to the United States. Even if they can afford to go through the private sector in the United Kingdom, they come here because we have the finest health care system in the world.

But, Mr. Speaker, if I could tell the people in America, if I was allowed to through the rules of the House, I would tell them that that health care system that you're enjoying today, the quality of health care, the medications, the treatments, the tests, surgeries, and all of the things that make us have the highest quality of health care in the world, is going to be destroyed by this bill that's going to be started through the legislative process next week.

I have been joined in this hour by a physician colleague from Tennessee, Dr. Roe, who has tremendous experience with TennCare in his home State of Tennessee. I welcome him to join us today, and I ask the doctor, I yield to the doctor to give us some insights about TennCare and what it produced in Tennessee and about the cost and quality and how things were affected there and whatever the gentleman wants to inform the Speaker.

Dr. Roe, if you could speak to the American people. I know you would like to speak to them, but you have to speak to the Speaker and me.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

I want to make that crystal clear. Businesses could not afford to continue paying for the private insurance, and so people went from private insurance, and they were being forced over to the government plan; is that correct?

I wanted to bring out a point. I have got an article here that came from Capitalism Magazine. The title of the article is ``Health Care to Die for in Britain'' by Ralph Reiland, from February 6, 2005. I just want to read a couple of points that Mr. Reiland makes in this article.

He says, ``Among women with breast cancer, for example, there's a 46 percent chance of dying from it in Britain, versus a 25 percent chance in the United States. `Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world,' writes Bartholomew, `and America has the best.' ''

He is quoting an issue in the Spectator Magazine, the British magazine, where James Bartholomew was talking about the British health care system.

The point of that, and the American people, I hope, will understand as we look at this, their single-payer system--now, in Great Britain, if you are extremely wealthy, you have to be extremely wealthy, you can buy private health insurance. And we have seen a lot of those people who are extremely wealthy actually come to the United States for their health care.

But unless you are extremely, extremely wealthy and you are in that single-payer system--and that's where we are headed, in my belief, in the United States--you have almost a half chance, and that's in a 5- year survival rate in Great Britain, of dying, where actually it's less than 25 percent today in America.

I think you have quoted some statistics on breast cancer. Do you have those at hand that you could give?

Let's make this perfectly clear for Madam Speaker and for the American public. You just made a statement that I want to focus upon. You say somebody could go to the emergency room, and it's really an emergency room in the United States, and they will get health care provided to them; is that correct?

And there is a Federal law actually called EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, that requires emergency rooms to evaluate and essentially treat everybody who walks in the door, whether they can pay or not, whether they are here legally or not or any other way; is that correct?

And then the point I keep hearing, particularly from those on the other side that want this socialized medicine program, this Washington-based, Washington bureaucratic administered health care system, that everybody needs access to health care.

But you just made a statement that the American people need to understand, and, Madam Speaker, I hope that they will understand. Everybody

in this country has access to health care by walking into an emergency room.

And the question is, really, where people are going to get their health care provided to them, who is going to pay for it and what cost. Is that correct?

Would the gentleman yield?

I want to interject here just a moment. With the current technology we have on that radical prostatectomy, as we call it in medicine--taking the prostate out, all the prostate out--in the past, when we did it with the nonrobotic surgery, the chances of that gentleman having to wear a condom catheter because they cannot control the urine and they just have a constant leakage of urine out of their bladder was very high compared to today.

Their chances, if they're a young man, of having impotence prior to that--in other words, they cannot perform sexually--was a pretty good chance that they were going to have problems with that. But with the robotic surgery, the incidence of impotency, the incidence of incontinence, which is where the urine leaks out, is very low.

It's because of that technology that the development of that technology is going to come to a screeching halt, I believe. Would you agree with that?

Well, you're exactly right, Dr. Roe. We have a critical shortage today of medical care personnel, nurses and doctors, as you're saying. In fact, my alma mater, the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, is starting to develop some satellite campuses to try to train more physicians in the State of Georgia.

In fact, one is going to be opening within the next 2 years in Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is, near where I live. I live outside of Athens in Watkinsville.

But we still are going to be behind even with this new training. But what I have seen, and I think Dr. Roe will probably corroborate this, is that we have seen doctors stop taking Medicaid, stop taking Medicare because of the poor reimbursement rates. And if we go to this supposedly two systems of one private and one public, as has been projected by the leadership and many people on the other side, what is going to happen is that you're going to have, because of the very poor reimbursements rates, you're going to have hospitals fail; you're going to have doctors not take those patients on the public plan. So that in itself is going to take choices away. Plus, you're going to have a Washington bureaucrat telling the patient what medicines that they can have.

You mentioned, Dr. Roe, just a moment ago about all the cephalosporins, one of the powerful antibiotics. When you and I came along--we were almost contemporaries in medical school, though you went to Tennessee and I went to the Medical College of Georgia--we had antibiotics that were very limited.

We have got bacteria today--in fact, a patient that's very close to me personally has pseudomonas pneumonia. When I went to medical school, that patient would have died within a matter of weeks. She now has a PIC line. She's gotten IV antibiotics over and over again. That's not going to be available to her in this new public-option plan, this government-run plan, and she's just going to die. She's 85 years old. And she's going to die. She's had this pneumonia for about 6 months now. And she's still living. When I was in medical school, she would have died within a matter of days.

Life is precious. Some would say, Well, she's 85 years of age; we should just let her die. And that's exactly what's going on in Canada and Great Britain today. They don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently.

Dr. Roe, a lot of people are going to die. This program, government option that's being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people.

Yes, sir.

Will the gentleman yield?

You made a great point there. The vast majority of employees in this country are employees of small businesses. The small businesses are having a hard time paying these high premiums. And so if we could just have some tax changes to allow deductibility for the individual or for the small business, which is not in law today-- it's only the large businesses that can deduct and not pay taxes on that benefit to their employees or the employee not have to pay tax on that benefit. It's only applicable to large businesses.

Most people who are employed, most of the uninsured in this country who have a hard time affording it, most small businesses who have a hard time affording to pay for health insurance for their employees are in that situation because it's not deductible. And if we made some tax changes to make it deductible for everybody for their health premium, that in itself would take care of a lot of those people that you were talking about earlier who are not insured today?

Yes, sir.

Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding. You're exactly right. I hear the majority Members over and over again, many Members of the Democratic side talk about the Republican Party as the Party of No, N-O, because we say ``no'' to this energy tax, ``no''--they're going to accuse us of being the Party of No on this health care reform bill that they're going to shove down our throats-- down the American people's throats, this socialistic, Washington government-based, Washington bureaucratic-run health care system. They're going to accuse of us being the Party of No, N-O.

But I submit that the Republican Party is the Party of Know, K-N-O-W, because just that one point, if we would make that one tax change, it would pull into the insurance pool privately administered, no cost to the taxpayer, no cost to our children and grandchildren. It would not increase the deficit. Bring in that one thing of a tax policy change and it would ensure on a private basis a lot of those people who are uninsured today.

Yes, sir.

I thank Dr. Roe for yielding back. In fact, I'm developing a bill in my office right now that will give patients the ownership of their health insurance, whether they buy it themselves or whether it's paid for by their company. If the patient owns the health insurance, that will stop that portability problem because the patient owns it; and if they leave one job and go to another, they take the insurance with them. That's what I'm talking about. We as Republicans are the Party of Know because we know how to make insurance portable.

We have numerous Members over on our Republican side that are putting together proposals that the American people will never see. Why? Because the leadership of this House will not allow the American people to see my bill or your bill, Mr. Shadegg's bill, Mr. Ryan's bill, the Health Working Group of the Republican conference.

Bill after bill are being proposed to be introduced that will never see the light of day. The American people won't see it, the Members of this House won't see it, Members of Congress in either House won't see those. Why? Because the leadership of this House is forcing in a dictatorial manner their health care bill that's going to destroy the quality of health care.

Dr. Roe, I agree with you wholeheartedly. The American people need to demand that the bill be presented to the American people so that they can understand how it's going to affect them because it's going to affect every single person. There's a lot of people who work for big companies that say, Well, I've got good insurance through my employer, and I like it. Well, they need to understand that they're not going to be able to keep it because in 5 years, whether they are in a big multinational corporation that's paying for their health insurance today, they're going to be forced out of that into their single-payer government program where that Washington bureaucrat is going to be making their health care decisions. That's the first thing. Secondly, it's going to be extremely expensive for everybody. Government intrusion into

the health care system is what's driving up the cost. Dr. Roe and Madam Speaker, let me give you a good example that happened in my own medical practice of how government intrusion has affected the cost of insurance and health care across the country, whether it's government-paid health insurance, such as Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP, or whether it's private insurance.

I was practicing in a one-man office. I had three employees down in Americus, Georgia, and I had a small automated lab in my office. If a patient came in to see me, a doctor, and they had a red sore throat, they might have white patches on their throat, they were running a fever, coughing, and aching all over, maybe their nose is running, maybe they're coughing up some stuff, I, as a physician, knew that they may have a bacterial infection or they may have a viral infection or they may even have allergies. An allergy can actually show those same symptom complexes. I was taught in medical school not to abuse antibiotics because the overprescription of antibiotics causes a whole lot of problems for patients and causes a whole lot of increased cost. Well, Congress passed a bill called CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, which basically shut down my small automated lab that had quality control. I wanted to make sure that whenever I ran a test that I had good, proper results. Well, Congress passed a bill, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, CLIA, that shut down my lab; and if a patient came in with a red sore throat, coughing or aching all over, I would do a CBC, a complete blood count, to find out if they had a bacterial infection and, thus, needed antibiotics or had a viral infection and did not need the expense or the exposure to those antibiotics. I charged $12 for that CBC. CLIA shut down my lab. I had to send patients over to the hospital. So they had to drive from an office over there. It took an hour or two to do all the paperwork to get into the hospital and have their blood drawn. Then they'd come back to my office and sit and wait, frequently for several hours before I got the results of the test back. But I was charging $12 for that test, CBC. It took 5 minutes to do. It is a good quality control test, proper results, $12, 5 minutes. The hospital charged $75, and it took 2 to 3 hours. You take that one test. It jumped from $12 to $75 for one test. What does that do to costs for insurance across this country? It markedly increases the cost of everybody's insurance and makes it less affordable for everybody. HIPAA--let me bring another critter out. I call CLIA and HIPAA and all these things critters. I tell my constituents in the 10th Congressional District of Georgia that if they see these congressionally creative critters, HIPAA, CLIA and all those other acronyms, that they'd better hold onto their wallets because it's going to take a big bite out of their wallets. Well, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, was passed, and it's cost the health care system billions of dollars and has not paid for the first aspirin to treat the headaches it's created. It's totally unneeded legislation. So government intrusion into the health care system has created this mess of unaffordability, and the more government intrusion we get into the health care system, the less affordable it's going to be.

I will yield.

Well, I thank the gentleman for bringing that test up. It's just a good example of how government intrusion in the system creates higher costs for everybody, whether it's a privately insured plan that a patient has or whether it is the government-insured plan that the patient has, government involvement creates higher costs. And we know, at least on our side, that we have some solutions. We can literally lower the cost of health care if we change health care tax policy and make it deductible for everybody, if we allowed the patients to have some input into how health care decisions are made. In the plan that I'm developing in our office, we have a plan that would make patients be in charge, whether they're government insured or not. We create a marked expansion of health savings accounts. We need to have health savings accounts for Medicare patients where the Medicare patients and the Medicaid patients control that health savings account. It seems as if some in this body have decided it's a God-given right for people to own health insurance. Maybe it is. I don't know. I don't find it in the Constitution of the United States. And we haven't had that until Medicare came along and then Medicaid, where government intrusion in the health care system really has created this boondoggle that we have today. But government intrusion already is rationing care for my patients and yours. It's already causing problems for patients to find providers that will accept their insurance. It's already causing the high cost. It's already causing rationing of care. And to go down this road that's going to create a bigger government intrusion, which is going to destroy the quality of care, stop innovation, it's going to stop all of these life-saving drugs and treatment modalities that we see in the health care industry today, it's going to stop all of that because of that cost effectiveness that the gentleman from Tennessee was talking about.

I will yield.

I appreciate it. I want to ask the gentleman this: During my three and a half decades-plus of practicing medicine, I know in my own medical practice, and I know with colleagues that I've been associated with in Georgia, which is where I practiced medicine, that all of us have given away our services and not gotten paid. I don't resent that. I don't regret that. It's just part of what I did as a family doctor. Now under Federal law if I was accepting Medicare as a preferred provider, if somebody were to come into my office to see me-- I did a full-time house call practice. I still practice medicine. I still see patients when I go home today. So I am still practicing medicine. I am actively practicing. But I don't take Medicare or Medicaid. I just see those patients and treat them. If they pay me, great. If they can't, that's great too. I don't

care. I went to medical school to serve people. I think you did the same thing, Dr. Roe. But under current Federal law, if I were a physician that was a preferred provider in the Medicare system, and I had a young man, young woman who came into my office, was working, trying to make ends meet, had a health care problem, and they just could not afford to pay my bill, literally under the laws of this country today if I told them, ``Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I will treat you for free,'' as I've done to literally thousands of patients, given away hundreds of thousands of dollars of my services over my career practicing medicine. If I did that to one patient in the Medicare system, if they knew about it, they could fine me for every single Medicare claim I ever made, ask for all that money back, and can put me in jail for seeing a patient for free. That's inane. It's absolutely stupid. If we change how government insurance is provided and get the Medicare, Medicaid, State Children's Health Insurance Program, all the government insurers so that the patients own the policy and the insurance is what it's supposed to be, to help those people manage their finances, to help them manage their expenses for their health care that they purchase, that they go see the doctor, go to the hospital, if we could give them the ownership and give them their rights to make those decisions, then doctors could see patients for free, if they needed to be. Doctors could make those decisions; patients could make those decisions; and that's what we want to do on our side. But those philosophies are never, ever going to come to this floor because the leadership won't allow it to happen. We can literally lower--and I think by at least a third to half of what the costs are today for medicines, health insurance, hospital bills, doctors' bills, oxygen, wheelchairs, all those things--we can lower the cost of those things if the Republicans' proposals could ever see the light of day and be passed into law.

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. We have just a moment or two.

Madam Speaker, if I can speak to the American public today, what I would say to the American people is that starting next week the majority is going to force this health insurance reform down the throats of the American people. It is going to adversely affect every single American. The American people should stand up and say No, we want transparency.

Madam Speaker, if I could speak to every individual across this country, I would tell the American people to get on the phone, e-mail, fax, or visit your Congressman, your U.S. Senator, and say, Let's slow this process down. Let's get it right. Let's don't hasten in this process of trying to force something down the throats of the American people in the blackness of night where people can't see what's going on. Let us see, as Americans, what you are proposing, so we can look at the bill, so we can evaluate the bill, and so that everybody's voice across this country can be heard.

The former U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen once said that when he feels the heat, he sees the light.

The American people, Madam Speaker, need to put the heat on every single Member of Congress in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate by calling, writing, faxing, e-mailing and visiting their offices and say ``no'' to this process of not allowing people to read the bill.

The American people need to demand that this health care policy be looked at and be available for the American people to evaluate and not be forced down their throats like it is being done today.

Not only that, Madam Speaker, I invite the American people to call their family and friends and ask them to do the same thing. We have to light a grass fire of grassroots support all across this country to slow this process down. Demand transparency. Demand fairness. Demand openness. We are not getting that today, Madam Speaker. We have to demand it. The only way that is going to happen is if the American people will stand up and say ``no'' and tell their Member of Congress, particularly here in this House, between now and next Wednesday, they need to tell their Congressman to stop this process, allow fairness and allow transparency.

Let's have reform that makes sense. Republicans want that. Democrats want to have reform. But we don't need to do something that is going to break the system, destroy the quality of health care and be extremely expensive for everybody. We need to say ``no.''

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 13, 2009, at 12:30 p.m., for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, July 8, 2009, I missed the following votes: rollcall Nos. 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, and 488. If I had been able to make these votes, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall votes 481 and 488. I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall votes 480, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487.

I congratulate the gentleman for suggesting the American people contact their Members of Congress. I just want to say I just explained to the American people when we as Members of Congress say I associate myself with those comments, that means I agree wholeheartedly. And I do associate myself with those comments.

I want to remind the American people that former U.S. Senator Dirksen one time said that when he feels the heat, he sees the light. The American people need to put heat on the Members of Congress in the House and the Senate because the Senate has a bill too that is disastrous. It will do just the things that Mr. Shadegg was talking about. In our shop we have looked at those proposals over there on the Senate side, and it is going to be disastrous if that bill as we see it thus far is passed.

The only way we are going to stop it is for the American people to get on the telephone, to call their Members of Congress, call their U.S. House of Representatives as well as their U.S. Senators and say ``no.'' We as Republicans have been accused of being the Party of No, n-o. Frankly, we are the Party of Know, k-n-o-w. We know how to fix this problem. We know how to lower the cost of health care. We know how to give patients choice and give them ownership of their health care plan. We know how to fix this problem. We know that government intrusion into health care decisions and the health care decision- making process and reimbursement and all the reasons it is so high and unaffordable today.

I just wanted to associate myself with the comments that you made and encourage the American people to get on the telephone, to get on their e-mail, to get on their fax machines, to call their neighbors and their friends all over this country and encourage their neighbors, friends and family to contact their Members of Congress. Let's shut the telephone system down tomorrow, across this Nation, people calling, faxing and e-mailing to say ``no'' to this travesty, ``no'' to this piece of garbage. I will be outright and say it. You were looking for a nice word. But it is garbage. And it is going to destroy the quality of health care.

I am a medical doctor. I practiced medicine for 38 years. And this is going to place a government bureaucrat between the doctor and the patient. It is going to be extremely expensive. The quality is going to go down. Innovation is going to be for naught, and it is going to go away. People are not going to like this, and we need to have it in an open process.

American people need to understand what is in this bill, as little as we know about it. There are some things that we do know about it. Our friend, John Shadegg, just talked about that, the untruth of your being able to keep the health care policy that you currently have, is absolutely in this bill. People are not going to be able to keep their health care policy. We know that.

We also know, without a question, that there is going to be a Washington bureaucrat put between the doctor and the patient. So a Washington bureaucrat is going to be making your health care decisions, is my message to the American people, Mr. Speaker. It's going to make your health care decisions for you, Mr. Speaker.

You doctor is not just going to be able to make those decisions. You are not going to be able to make those decisions. Your family is not going to be able to make those decisions. And the decisions are going to be rationed. In other words, some Federal bureaucrat, some Washington bureaucrat is going to tell the patient what tests that they can have, what medicines they can have, what surgeries they can have, what X-rays they can have and what they can't have.

And there are going to be more can't-haves than can-haves, because this is going to be extremely expensive.

We know this that's in this bill: Right now, today, when people have insurance provided by their employer, that is a tax-free benefit. We already know that this Democratic bill is going to put taxes on your health insurance, and you're going to have to pay those. So what you're getting now, Mr. Speaker, the American people, at no tax consequences to you, you're going to have to pay taxes on it.

We know this, too--that Mr. Obama said a few weeks ago that he had to push through this, what I call cap-and-tax bill, the cap-and-trade bill, that it wasn't about the environment, because he said himself that he needed those taxes to pay for his health insurance program, this single-party payer program that we're going to; some Washington, bureaucratic-directed health care system. He needs those taxes to pay for it. So people's taxes are going to go up. Business taxes are going to go up. We're going to have these energy taxes, which is going to increase the cost of all goods and services--gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, food, medicine, everything is going to go up because of the energy tax that's over in the Senate. And I hope the American people will call and tell their Senators ``no'' to that, too.

It's critical at this late hour, which should be a very, very early hour but it's a late hour because the majority is going to force down the throat of the American people this health care plan that's going to be disastrous and take their choices away, increase their taxes. It's going to destroy our economy, and it's going to destroy the quality of health care. I hope they'll call, fax, e-mail their Members of Congress and say no, let's put everything out in the open so that we can know what it is and so that alternative systems can be looked at.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, July 7, 2009, I missed the following votes: rollcall Nos. 478 and 479. If I had been able to make these votes, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall vote 478. I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote 479.