WASHINGTON – A Republican physician’s proposal to bar federal political appointees and bureaucrats from intervening in patient treatment decisions was brushed aside Monday night by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Democratic majority.
The proposal to ban government employees from overruling doctors on matters of direct patient treatment was rejected on vote of 23 Republicans and one Democrat in favor, 33 Democrats opposed.
“This is about the practice of medicine,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, of an amendment by U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., to the Democrats’ health reform bill. “If I asked for a show of hands about how many people think people in Washington should tell your doctor how to practice medicine on you, I don’t think there’d be anybody who would raise a hand. I wouldn’t raise my hand. I don’t want my doctor to be told how to practice medicine on me or my family.”
“My guess is most Americans would not like a detached bureaucrat who’d had a bad day to make that decision,” added U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. “That’s what this amendment is all about. … This is a debate about whether a federal bureaucrat can dictate to a medical provider. … I would hope that this committee would decide that the doctor-patient relationship is more important than the bureaucrat-patient relationship.”
The proposal’s author, an ob-gyn who practiced in Marietta, Ga., for 26 years before being elected to Congress, co-chairs the 12-member Republican Doctors Caucus in the House of Representatives. He said that doctors “should not be forced to practice under the dictates of some federal employee or political appointee who really has no medical background.”
Democrats fired back with a scattershot defense, beginning with an objection that the proposal was “too broad.” For that reason, “I think this will undermine the whole legislation,” concluded U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. “You kind of throw water on innovation,” added U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chairman of the Health Subcommittee.
“Let’s have another reality check here, too,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., swiveling adroitly from the question of bureaucrats overruling physicians to the seemingly unrelated issue of whether small companies will dump their employees into a government health plan. “No. 1, it will probably be at least eight years before that can happen, and it’s up to the secretary of HHS to make that determination,” he explained.
The amendment and roll call tally can be found here.
