I thank the gentleman, and once again the Chamber this evening is filled with gentlemen that I admire and I'm learning from here in my first term in Congress. I certainly thank each one of you for your leadership. I just want to hit one…

Well, I thank the gentleman. I've practiced medicine for over 30 years and still have a clinic and see patients from time to time. You know, insurance companies are a bee in my bonnet too. You hear the other side of the aisle talking about…

Yeah, absolutely. Tennessee had something called TennCare. It I think is a similar model to what Massachusetts has today and somewhat similar to what we're looking at here. And what Tennessee found is the thing that's really a reality that…

Let me address that. We were talking a moment ago about the fact there are two ways to save money in health care. One is to have the patient become a savvy consumer and make choices for himself or herself in combination with his or her…

Free enterprise. That is right. Free choice. The other is to have total government control. And then you are going to have to have long lines and rationing. Now, in the countries that have the latter, that is the long lines and rationing…

And if you multiply that times the number of women who get cancer, you are talking hundreds of thousands of women just in that range there.

Yes. Absolutely. And just one last thing. The way they define emergency surgery in Canada is any surgery that doesn't at this moment save your life. What does that mean? Someone who needs bypass surgery, who has a 99 percent lesion in…

The statistics show that the number one issue for Americans today is jobs, without question. And that health care reform, while it is important to you and me and all of the Republicans and everyone in the House, for that matter, it's only…

And then if I could just add to that, addend that, is in theory, well, that's nice; you can have whatever you want whenever you want it. The problem is that taxpayers ultimately end up paying for this, and at some point you run out of…

I think it bears noting that this bill defies common sense. We just talked about the fact that you take a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, which is already struggling, and no one has ever explained in this year-long debate how in…

The other thing is the idea that suddenly you can cover 30 million more Americans using the same resources. Nobody buys that. And finally, another way to say this is that there is going to be an increase of taxes on 25 percent more…

Mr. Speaker, over months of debate over the government takeover of health care, a growing list of terms created by the Democrats have been added to the American lexicon, terms such as ``Cornhusker kickback,'' ``Louisiana purchase,''…

That is absolutely right. Furthermore, just as way of an example, we actually had people from Canada and from the United Kingdom, both patients and doctors, who came to testify before us. And they told us really crazy things that we would…

That is absolutely correct. And that is not considering Medicaid, which pays more like 30 cents on the dollar, which under this bill will increase by 30 percent. The number of people covered, that is.

Well, if doctors and hospitals are under-reimbursed further--they're at their limit today. If the cuts go even further--and of course $500 billion is draconian by any stretch of the imagination; that's as much as the entire annual budget…

Well, I thank my friend from Missouri. You're absolutely right. But you know what's interesting? Everywhere I go, there are a lot of people around Capitol Hill today. I bump into people that I know, people who are just average, everyday…

Well, I will remind the gentleman that currently physicians and hospitals are being paid 80 cents on the dollar, and the mystery that seems to be out there and very few people are addressing is--and you hear the other side talking about…

Absolutely. And again, it was only a month or so ago that the Mayo Clinic--I believe their branch in Arizona--announced that they were taking no further Medicare patients. And that's under the current pay system.