Jeff Duncan: “Every year 54,000 Americans lose a foot or a leg to diabetes. As terrible as this is, one thing that makes this…”

“Every year 54,000 Americans lose a foot or a leg to diabetes. As terrible as this is, one thing that makes this statistic especially heartbreaking is that many thousands of these amputations could have been prevented were it not for Federal redtape. Two-thirds of all amputations in diabetic patients are precipitated by traumatic foot ulceration, which could have been prevented with proper care and modern medical products that are already available. However, Federal bureaucrats at the Health Care Financing Administration, HCFA, are restricting FDA-approved dressings which have been proven to heal these types of wounds. If this is not a scandal, I do not know what is, people who are having amputations thanks to our own Federal bureaucracy. Just think how wonderful it will be if we could prevent up to two-thirds of these 54,000 diabetic amputations each year. Sadly, it seems that the Medicare system sometimes gives little or no incentives to doctors, nursing homes, or hospitals to help their patients get better quickly because as long as they are treating patients they are getting payments from the Government. There are better ways to treat patients, Mr. Speaker, especially diabetic patients. To get more specific, Mr. Speaker, there is a product approved by the FDA which has been shown through repeat success to have healed repeatedly diabetic ulcerations and to have eliminated the need for amputations. This product is called Multidex.”