Pete Stark: “I am going to start with three fairy tales, I had four, but my staff made me cut one out, fairy tales your mother would…”

“I am going to start with three fairy tales, I had four, but my staff made me cut one out, fairy tales your mother would tell you. One, if you didn't clean your ears, potatoes would grow in your ears. The second fairy tale my mother told me was if you ate too many watermelon seeds, a watermelon vine would grow out of your belly button. The third fairy tale is that this bill will do one blessed thing to help information technology. I am not surprised that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle spin every issue in a partisan way, but it is a shame that you are now using health information technology as a pawn to advance your bankrupt ideology. The promise that information technology holds to save lives and money is vast, but H.R. 4157 forestalls that promise. It is a lousy bill. It does nothing. H.R. 4157 doesn't provide for the development of or the adoption of interoperability standards; it does not provide funding to help providers transition to an electronic medical records system; and it does not strengthen privacy protections. It does do one thing: It weakens Medicare's fraud and abuse laws. My colleague from Louisiana on the Ways and Means Committee acknowledged in our full committee markup that if the fraud and abuse provisions were removed from this bill, it would accomplish nothing. Zip. That is a Republican who said that. CBO says, ``CBO estimates that enacting H.R.…”