Democrats & Olympia Snowe Voted for Hitler Policy

September 25, 2009 (LPAC)—The following excerpts are from the Wednesday, Sept. 23 debate in the markup session of the Senate Finance Committee when Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) engineered the passage of the Nazi IMAC provision by defeating the amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), to KILL the IMAC provision. Cornyn's amendment was defeated when all the Democrats on the committee, plus Republican Olympia Snowe, voted against it. Lyndon LaRouche denounced this vote in the strongest terms: "If you support this policy, you are in the same category as Adolf Hitler. IMAC is Adolf Hitler. If you support IMAC, you support Hitler's policy and should be treated accordingly. You are a Nuremberg Trial suspect. You should know that now." Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA) was the main spokesman for IMAC.

CORNYN: I appreciate the passion with which the senator from West Virginia [Rockefeller] speaks ... But my hope is that our future would embrace the courage to make tough decisions ourselves rather than outsource them to an unelected, unaccountable body....

...When you talk about joining the spending decisions with decisions about outcomes, it reminds me of some of the concerns that we have heard about compared effectiveness research and how this could be used as a tool for rationing and how government, rather than physicians making decisions in the best interest of their patients would determine who gets what care, because it would determine who gets compensated for that care and who does not.

And this is really at the heart of some of our concerns about rationing and the abuse of comparative effectiveness research, which could be used for a good purpose but which in the hand of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats could also be abused. So I agree with the chairman that our entitlement spending is out of control ...this bill does nothing to fix that."

BAUCUS: I personally believe this commission is very important. There are different versions of this commission, different senators have different ideas on how it should be constituted. But in the main, I think it is very, very important....

We've got to find a way to control costs... And I do believe that too often Congress has a hard time saying no to providers. Providers come in and say, well, gee we won't agree with this update, we need more ... And I do think it makes some sense to have some private check here to help members of Congress do the right thing ... start to reduce the rate of health care costs in this country....

So, I just really believe very, very strongly that this provision that we have in the markup is basically a no-brainer. That is my personal belief. This is just so important to help set the stage, to help reduce the rate of growth of spending ... Otherwise ... Spending is going to keep growing up so much that pretty soon all these calls for empowerment commissions are going to start to sound a lot more attractive.

JAY ROCKEFELLER: I feel ... not so much against this [Cornyn] amendment as I am for the Medicare Advisory Commission. And I think this is probably the most important argument that we will have.... we have to learn how to discipline ourselves.

I'd appreciate if my colleagues would listen, particularly on the democratic side.

I think this is a turning point for health care ... the future of health care. This is the discipline that we are going to have to face up to in health care in the future, which we do not have today.... all of us are going to be able to sit here and explain how to really do a good outcomes research based reimbursement policy ... [to reward a hospital] which is doing a much better job on outcomes, because they have a tough administrator , and he's making really good decisions....

And it is the future of health care, analysis, hard-core professional, nonpolitical, non-monetary based, I say carefully. Decision-making is the future of the health care system which works.