Congressman Fleming Opposes Government Controlled Healthcare Pt 3

The following is an excerpt from The Fount online news article entitled: "Fleming Wants 'Right Kind' Of Healthcare Reform Pt. 3"

Congressman Fleming continues his statement found at the end of Pt. 2:


"There's another thing about this you need to understand, anytime you put the government over anything, you create bureaucracy. Once the money goes into that same bureaucracy, we're talking about jobs, we're talking about new jobs, we're talking about payrolls for the administrators; people who don't have power, who now have power and control over who? YOU.

And that's one of the problems if this gets passed, it's very hard to tear it back down again because now you have people who are now invested in your own personal livelihood who depend on this.

This is a chart of the system. This is 52 new bureaucracies that will be in the system if this bill is passed in it's present form. This is YOU, and this is the government, and everything else is in between."

Then, the congressman talked about how certain Democrats admit that the chart is accurate but won't admit it to the media. "They're scared to death of this thing. But they're stuck between Nancy Pelosi who says she'll crush them if they don't support her and what's right for the people" said Congressman Fleming.

He continued, "There's two problems with this beyond this bureaucracy. One is, there's something in this thing that's not in it. What do I mean by that? This bill, eleven hundred pages: there would not be anything in there about abortion. There would not be anything in there that said 'mandatory abortion.' And yet, that is in it. Why is that in there? I'm talking about taxpayer funded abortions.

Fifty-one percent of Americans are against abortions. Sixty-nine percent are against taxpayer funded abortions. So, even a significant number of pro-choice people don't want to see your tax money pay for abortions.

Medicaid years ago when it was first developed, there was a series of lawsuits to determine should that (abortion) be a government service under Medicaid? And also I was actually a physician in the Navy at the time. And all of a sudden, at the result of a court decision, we heard the judge saying abortions were to be done right there in Navy hospitals.

Well, what happened was at the result of these court cases it was decided that abortions were a part of family planning. And family planning is a covered service in healthcare, and abortions are a covered service. And after that series of court cases, the abortion rate started to skyrocket.

And so Congress came up with something called the Hyde Amendment, which is something that has to be renewed every year. And what it does is it says there will not be any (federal) taxpayer funded abortions.

And that's the way it's been for many years, the abortion rate has trickled down, 87% of counties today do not have abortions. Many big cities today like Chattanooga I understand does not have abortion services. So where abortion services are not convenient, you're gonna see abortion rates drop.

Well, if this bill passes in it's present form it will not only pay for tax funded abortions, but because there will be certification of services, being that every service provider has to be convenient and immediately available, it will require towns such as Minden to have convenient efficient abortion services available upon demand at your cost."

Despite any denial of this being the case, the congressman went on to say certain Democrats admit this is true and unless specific laws are enacted to block abortions, taxpayer funded abortions will be mandated. The congressman said that the minority party Republicans tried through several committees to pass amendments that would block the abortions, but even the so-called blue dog Democrats blocked their efforts to stop taxpayer funded abortions.

Before taking questions, the Congressman Fleming lastly covered the issue of 'death boards': "I'm gonna tell you what's in there, and then you decide for yourselves. In the stimulus bill that was passed there was 200 million dollars to create something called a 'comparative protectiveness board' and it's patterned after a similar board in Great Britain."

The congressman/doctor explained how the system in Great Britain works. He said that the board looks at every single treatment a doctor performs and decides what is appropriate and what is affordable. "And that's the way they ration care in Great Britain.

They say 'you're 79 and you've got a broken hip, you've got so many years left..' there's something called 'quality adjusted life use' - it's some kind of mathematical equation and it basically looks at people by age and by illness" said the congressman.

He said it's by the use of this 'quality adjusted life use' formula by which the comparative protectiveness board determines who is best suited for diagnosis and treatment. "So someone who is 55 and healthy would get a hip replacement before somebody who is 75 and not so healthy. That's the way it works in Great Britain."

The congressman discussed how the 200 million dollars spent in the stimulus package to start the comparative protectiveness board does not cover the total cost, but is just a down payment. He then talked about the life discussions of that board, and how the discussion of making "advanced preparations" should only be between a patient and their doctor.

"I don't think the government has any business being in the business of deciding when you end your life or helping you end your life" says Fleming. "There are several in the administration who are behind this, who are known euthanasia proponents" the congressman said. He then referred to a phrase on the VA website called: Your Life Your Choice.

Congressman Fleming introduced and discussed it as follows: "They've been encouraging this to VA patients for some years. President Bush didn't know about this and when he found out about it he killed it, and President Obama brought it back up. And one of the things that it talks about on page 21, it has a checklist. There's a number of questions here like: I can no longer walk or get around in a wheelchair; difficult to acceptable, worth living but just barely, not worth living, can't answer now.

So this is a checklist that someone is supposed to go through, and one of the answers is 'worth living but just barely' or 'not worth living at all.' Now, normally to a physician if somebody talks about it's not worth living, then we begin to see flags go up that maybe someone is suicidal. There's not a word in here about suicide.

This is all in my opinion leading people in one direction or the other. What this bill calls for is a mandatory visit with your doctor every 5 years at a certain age, and the doctor will be paid for it. And there are specifics as to what the doctor is to discuss and what information he is to refer you to, although it is not in the bill yet, but we know there will be specifics. The administration will put them in after it's passed.

But the doctor is being paid and being told something he can talk to you about, and if you have a terminal illness or are in a nursing home, or some other more serious condition, then you're supposed to be seen more often than that.

I don't know about you but to me it's a bothersome, worrisome thing to me because what's at stake that your government has in these procedures? Well, the government knows just like you that 25% of Medicare costs are in the last 6 months of life. And just think, 'if we could save that last 25% what we could do with that money - all the great things we could do with that money.' So you see, there's really some issues at the beginning of life and at the end of life that are very worrisome."

The congressman then shared how it is his opinion that liberal socialists know that to enact their policies, they have to conduct "incremental legislation" by getting their nose under the tent first, and then go to the next step, and that things which were not tolerable years and years ago are tolerable today because of that step by step by step process.

He talked about current hate crime legislations that are more severe than previous ones, and how pastors can find themselves at risk for speaking out against certain behaviors that they feel are unacceptable.

Congressman Fleming ended his presentation by referring the audience to the Republican's version of House Bill 3400 that can be found on his website. He said their version has no government takeover provisions in it, or the negative things he previously discussed and he referred to it as "true reform of healthcare insurance."

He said it does away with being excluded because of previous or current illness, it allows small businesses to act big together by pooling their resources together in order to negotiate for bigger discounts, is deficit neutral ("It doesn't bust the budget in any way"), it has tort reform which does away with frivolous lawsuits and is not included in the Democratic version because trial lawyers make up the main fund raising arm of the Democratic party.

According to Congressman Fleming, the Republican version of the bill really provides insurance to those who want it without the government taking over healthcare. He also pointed out that under their version of the bill, the elite would not be the only ones who could afford private insurance like in Great Britain where there are two standards of healthcare.

He said that more middle American's would be able to afford private insurance. The congressman also pointed out that he is not being paid by the private insurance industry to say these things.

He said the private insurance industry is far better at being competitive and efficient, and that when liberals bring up the fact that the insurance companies are making huge amounts of money, he argues back by saying "Who would you rather be covered by, an insurance company that's making money or one that's losing money for heaven's sakes? Who would you rather work for, a company that's making money or losing money? I mean that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of!"

The congressman then took questions from the floor for approximately 40 more minutes. This concludes our coverage of Congressman John Fleming's Town Hall Meeting at the Minden Convention Center, Monday August 24th 2009.

Part 1 of 3 can be found here. Part 2 of 3 can be found here.