Mrs. BACHMANN. We need to know what the people who advise the President of the United States think and believe about health care reform, Mr. Speaker. Listening to the President's adviser's actual words I believe is very enlightening.
This morning I read a column written by Betsy McCaughey, and I would like to quote from it extensively now. This is from a column dated July 24, 2009. Ms. McCaughey wrote the following. She said, The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of Presidential appointees. Government will decide, not the people, not their doctors, what our plan will cover, how much leeway our doctor will have, and what senior citizens will finally get under Medicare.
But what is even more important, Mr. Speaker, are the actual words of the President's advisers on health care. Here are the words from one of the President's first advisers, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House Chief of Staff. He has already been appointed to two key positions: one is Health Policy Adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, the other is as a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.
This is what Mr. Emanuel has written, and I quote, ``Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely `lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change.''
Isn't this what the Democrats have claimed we are going to find $500 billion in savings for? The President's own adviser says this is just lipstick, this is just a paper covering, this isn't where the real savings are. Savings, the President's adviser writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, he writes. Now, hear me, Mr. Speaker, this is the President's adviser writing this, Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously ``as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.''
But that is what the people want their doctor to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patient and consider social justice, such as whether the money would be better spent on someone else. This is [Page: H8852] a horrific notion to our Nation's doctors, but it is a horrific notion to each American because doctors believe, as Americans believe, that social justice is given out one patient at a time.
But the President's adviser, Dr. Emanuel, believes communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled. Care should be reserved for the nondisabled, not given to those who are ``irreversibly'' prevented from becoming participating citizens. ``An obvious example,'' he said, ``is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.''
We just lost my father-in-law to dementia 2 months ago. I thank God that the doctors were able to alleviate my poor father-in-law's symptoms at the end of his life at age 85.
[Time: 19:45]
Apparently, under the Democrats' health care plan, my father-in-law would not have received the high quality of care that he received in his last 2 months of life. Or if you're a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy, watch out.
In fact, the President's adviser defends discrimination against older patients. He writes: ``Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. Every person lives through different stages of life rather than being a single age. Even if a 25-year-old receives priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 now was previously 25.''
These bills that are being rushed through Congress right now, maybe even this week, are going to cut over $500 billion out of Medicare in the next 10 years, putting it on the backs of our State legislature to fill the gaps. Knowing how unpopular these cuts are, the President's Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has urged Congress to delete their own authority over Medicare to a new Presidentially appointed bureaucracy that will not be accountable to the public.
Here is the President's next adviser, Dr. David Blumenthal. He recommends that we slow medical innovation in order to control health spending. You heard me right. He said let's slow medical innovation to control health spending. He has long advocated government health spending controls, although he concedes they are associated with longer waits and reduced availability of new and expensive treatment and devices, but he calls it debatable whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost.
Mr. Speaker, Americans need to wake up and read what the President and his advisers are saying. It may scare them to go to the phones and call their Members. END
