Government Intrusion into the Health Care System

GOVERNMENT INTRUSION INTO THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM -- (House of Representatives - July 14, 2009)

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Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, Americans are hurting because of the high cost of health care. I am a medical doctor. We need to fix the system. It is affecting everybody. It is health care financing that is the problem. Why are health care expenses so high?

In my rural south Georgia medical practice, I had a lab. Congress passed a bill called CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act, that shut down my lab. Prior to being shut down, if a patient came to see me with a red, sore throat and running a fever, I would do a CBC, a complete blood count, to see if they had a bacterial infection and thus needed antibiotics, or a viral infection where antibiotics are not going to help. I charged $12 to do the test in 5 minutes. CLIA shut my lab down. I had to send patients across the way to the hospital, 2 to 3 hours at $75.

It is government intrusion into the health care system that has caused this high cost. We have got to get the government out of it. This public option is going to force everybody from their private insurance over to a public insurance where the system is already broken, where we are having rationing of care and where a government bureaucrat is going to make health care decisions for you. The American people need to stand up and say ``no'' to this public option.

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