President and Congress at Congressional Gold
Medal
ceremony, citing VA healthcare as the model for
reforming
Medicare and Medicaid. (news story included)
President George W. Bush and Dr. Michael
DeBakey
-------------------------
A print version of this story is posted below the
video.
It is of interest to note that the VA did not
comment on DeBakey's praise since it went against administration policy.
The administration has no interest in reforming Medicare or Medicaid,
other than to spend less and provide less. VA press release is here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/vap08/vap042408-3.htm
Or, if your browser allows, use the embedded
player below.
(If video is not available, it is still processing at
YouTube...please try again in a few minutes.)
Houston's DeBakey gets congressional medal in
D.C.
Famed surgeon calls for lawmakers to use VA
system as a model for health care reform
By STEWART M. POWELL
Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A grateful nation honored Houston heart surgeon Michael E.
DeBakey on Wednesday, with President Bush and congressional leaders
bestowing Congress' highest civilian award on the 99-year-old physician in
an elaborate tribute conducted in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
Dr. DeBakey thanked the nation's top officials for the Congressional Gold
Medal, which was cast bearing his likeness and a quotation from him.
Then he prodded Congress to overhaul the Medicare and Medicaid systems by
using the Veterans Administration's medical system as a model. He helped
to set up the VA system following World War II.
DeBakey said after the ceremony that he hoped his proposal would be
pursued by the politically divided Congress, adding: "I think every once
in a while they could use a pat on the back — and a little suggestion."
Among those in attendance was DeBakey's longtime rival, Dr. Denton Cooley.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Senate sponsor of the bipartisan
measure that led to DeBakey's medal, called the ceremony a symbolic
setting for the two heart surgeons' public reconciliation.
"I thought it was wonderful that Denton Cooley was here," Hutchison said.
"They were contemporaries and competitors. They have had a blowup in their
relationship but they had a rapprochement, and I think that (Cooley) being
here is really, really wonderful."
A rift is healed
For decades, DeBakey and Cooley carried on one of
medicine's historic feuds, the result of Cooley implanting in a dying
47-year-old man in 1969 an experimental artificial heart developed in
DeBakey's lab at the Baylor College of Medicine. The rift finally ended
last October, when Cooley's Cardiovascular Surgical Society presented
DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award. Cooley said he hoped the
occasion wasn't just "a temporary truce," and DeBakey responded that he
was touched by the honor.
Cooley, among 300 members of Congress and dignitaries at the ceremony,
called DeBakey's award ''much deserved" and ''a great credit to our city
of Houston."
Noting that he was 12 years younger than DeBakey, Cooley, 87, added: ''I
just hope I can use my next 12 years in such a fruitful way as Mike has
his. He's amazing."
DeBakey's award was a flat, Olympic-style gold medal roughly the diameter
of a softball struck by the U.S. Mint and inscribed with DeBakey's words:
''The pursuit of excellence has been my objective in life."
DeBakey said he would display the medal in a new library-museum named in
his honor at Baylor.
The award ceremony featured the nation's top elected officials hailing
DeBakey, who sat slightly hunched over in a wheelchair holding a red cane.
He is recovering from heart aortic repair surgery in 2006.
His wife, Katrin, watched from the front row of the audience.
The officials at Wednesday's ceremony recalled DeBakey's pioneering work
on a blood pump during his medical training; his contributions to
development of Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals for stabilizing battlefield
casualties; and his groundbreaking work that led to the first successful
coronary bypass surgery in 1964.
DeBakey has operated on more than 60,000 patients during his surgical
career and trained thousands of doctors who went on to broaden the reach
of his surgical techniques.
"His legacy is holding the fragile and sacred gift of human life in his
hands and returning it unbroken," Bush said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., praised DeBakey's compassion. "By
literally fixing broken hearts," she said, "Dr. DeBakey has given hope and
health to millions."
Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, the House sponsor of the bipartisan legislation
that led to the medal, told the gathering, "DeBakey's life proves that not
only can one person impact the world, but he can also change the world for
the good of all."
6th Texan to be honored
DeBakey is the sixth Texan to have received the
Congressional Gold Medal. Norman Borlaug, the Texas A&M agriculturalist
and father of the Green Revolution, and the late golfer Byron Nelson were
awarded the medal in 2007. The other Texans who received it were
industrialist Howard Hughes, former House Speaker Sam Rayburn and former
first lady Lady Bird Johnson. Her husband, President Lyndon B. Johnson,
presented DeBakey the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.
In all, the congressional medal has been awarded 136 times. Other
recipients include George Washington, Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison.
At Wednesday's ceremony, DeBakey said he hoped that his personal lobbying
of Congress would speed the overhaul of the country's health care system.
''If they could find a way to utilize the principles of the Veterans
Administration, that is a superb program, superb," DeBakey told the
Houston Chronicle after the ceremony. "It does not use any money to
support it from the insurance companies who are in it for money."
Hutchison, noting that Congress had looked into similar proposals in the
past, said lawmakers had concluded that the VA system was too tightly
targeted to the specific medical needs of veterans to serve as a model for
medical coverage for the wider population.
Both DeBakey and his wife made it clear that he's planning to remain
active. For a reception at the nearby Library of Congress, he traded the
wheelchair used during the ceremony for his favored motorized scooter,
which didn't fit in a Capitol elevator.
Cruising in Houston
DeBakey said that he was looking forward to
driving his new black Porsche on Houston's freeways when he returns home.
It would be the first highway jaunt by the elderly physician since aortic
repair surgery two years ago by Dr. George Noon, a heart surgeon trained
by DeBakey who practices at The Methodist Hospital in Houston.
Having his patient look forward to sliding behind the wheel of a new
sports car was "a good incentive to keep working on getting stronger,"
Noon said. "He's got the determination to do it."
Katrin DeBakey said her husband was eager to press ahead both with his
medical reform proposal and his highway driving.
"He's on to his next project," she said. "He's not done."
Chronicle reporter Todd Ackerman contributed to this report.
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