U.S. Rep. Ron Paul | palliative care |
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 (H.R. 2260)
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 111:8
Another thing is this sets up a new agency. For those conservative colleagues of mine who do not like the nationalization of medical care, what my colleagues are looking at here is a new agency of government setting up protocols, educating doctors and hospitals, and saying this is the way palliative care must be administered. My colleagues will have to answer with reports to the Federal Government.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 (H.R. 2260)
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 111:15
The loss of a narcotic’s license, as this bill would dictate as punishment, is essentially denying a medical license to all doctors practicing medicine. Criminal penalties can be invoked as well. I would like to call attention to my colleagues that this bill is a lot more than changing the Controlled Substance Act. It is involved with educational and training programs to dictate to all physicians providing palliative care and how it should be managed. An entirely new program is set up with an administrator that “shall” carry out a program to accomplish the developing and the advancing of scientific understanding of palliative care and to disseminate protocols and evidence-based practices regarding palliative care.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 (H.R. 2260)
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 111:18
Under this bill a new program of grants, cooperative agreements and contracts to help professional schools and other medical agencies will be used to educate and train health care professionals in palliative care. It is not explicit but one can expect that if the rules are not followed and an institution is receiving federal money they will be denied these funds unless they follow the universal protocols set up by the federal government. The bill states clearly that any special award under this new program can only be given if the applicant agrees that the program carried out with the award will follow the government guidelines. These new programs will be through the health professional schools, i.e. the medical schools’ residency training programs and other graduate programs in the health professions. It will be a carrot and stick approach and in time the medical profession will become very frustrated with the mandates and the threat that funds will be withheld.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 (H.R. 2260)
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 111:19
The Secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of these programs are required to evaluate all the programs which means more reports to be filled out by the institutions for bureaucrats in Washington to study. The results of these reports will be to determine the effect such programs have on knowledge and practice regarding palliative care. Twenty four million dollars is authorized for this new program.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 112:2
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. This will improve the bill. I am very concerned, as a physician, that this bill will do great harm to the practice of medicine. This is micromanaging the palliative care of the dying.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 112:10
The Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999, H.R. 2260, would amend Title 21, United States Code, for the laudable goal of protecting palliative care patients from the scourge of “assisted” suicide. However, by preempting what is the province of States — most of which have already enacted laws prohibiting “assisted suicide” — and expanding its use of the Controlled Substances Act to further define what constitutes proper medical protocol, the federal government moves yet another step closer to both a federal medical bureau and a national police state.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 112:13
However, Congress does significantly more damage than simply threatening physicians with penalties for improper prescription of certain drugs — it establishes (albeit illegitimately) the authority to dictate the terms of medical practice and, hence, the legality of assisted suicide nationwide. Even though the motivation of this legislation is clearly to pre-empt the Oregon Statute and may be protective of life in this instance, we mustn’t forget that the saw (or scalpel) cuts both ways. The Roe versus Wade decision — the Court’s intrusion into rights of states and their previous attempts to protect by criminal statute the unborn’s right not to be aggressed against — was quite clearly less protective of life than the Texas statute it obliterated. By assuming the authority to decide for the whole nation issues relating to medical practice, palliative care, and assisted suicide, the foundation is established for a national assisted suicide standard which may not be protective of life when the political winds shift and the Medicare system is on the verge of fiscal collapse. Then, of course, it will be the federal government’s role to make the tough choices of medical procedure rationing and for whom the cost of medical care doesn’t justify life extension. Current law already prohibits private physicians from seeing privately funded patients if they’ve treated a Medicaid patient within two years.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 112:14
Additionally, this bill empowers the Attorney General to train federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel to discern the difference between palliative care and euthanasia. Most recently, though, it was the Attorney General who specifically exempted the physicians of Oregon from certain provisions of Title 21, the very Title this legislation intends to augment. Under the tutelage of the Attorney General, it would thus become the federal police officer’s role to determine at which point deaths from pain medication constitute assisted suicide.
palliative care
Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
27 October 1999 1999 Ron Paul 112:16
Like the unborn, protection of the lives of palliative care patients is of vital importance. So vitally important, in fact, it must be left to the states’ criminal justice systems and state medical licensing boards. We have seen what a mess results from attempts to federalize such an issue. Numerous states have adequately protected both the unborn and palliative care patients against assault and murder and done so prior to the federal government’s unconstitutional sanctioning of violence in the Roe versus Wade decision. Unfortunately, H.R. 2260 ignores the danger of further federalizing that which is properly reserved to state governments and, in so doing, ignores the Constitution, the bill of rights, and the insights of Chief Justice Rehnquist. For these reasons, I must oppose H.R. 2260, The Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999.
Texas Straight Talk from 20 December 1996 to 23 June 2008 (573 editions) are included in this Concordance. Texas Straight Talk after 23 June 2008 is in blog form on Rep. Paul’s Congressional website and is not included in this Concordance.
Remember, not everything in the concordance is Ron Paul’s words. Some things he quoted, and he added some newspaper and magazine articles to the Congressional Record. Check the original speech to see.