Breast Cancer Screening Guidelines

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her courage to get up here and talk about her ailment. I, too, am a cancer survivor, and it is a difficult process. But my concern is greater than even our own personal experiences. It is what is the actual result of that health care reform bill that leads us to this resolution.

We are scrambling around on the floor today to say that a government-appointed commission, this task force, has made a recommendation based on quality of year lives and cost, not good science, not that what saves lives, that women between 40 and 49 need not get mammograms. And you say, listen, that doesn't mean rationing. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have any weight of law. But guess what? The health care reform bill that passed this House makes those recommendations law.

Let me read a couple of quick things, Mr. Speaker, if I may. By the way, you have to go to three different sections, two different complete books, to understand how this impacts real women in America, some 2,000 pages into it.

One section: Limitation on individual health insurance coverage may only be offered on or after the first day of year one as an exchange-participating health care plan. Pretty fancy Washingtonspeak.

Let me tell you what it means in another section of the bill about 1,000 pages later: A health plan is prohibited from offering coverage for benefits not included in the essential benefits package.

And you say, Oh, no that's a floor.

It's not a floor. The language in the bill goes on further. And do you know what it does? It says that the only difference between the levels of plans is the amount of cost sharing, not what it covers.

Here is the scary part, of which I don't think you all realize that you did to about 47,000 women in America: All recommendations of the Preventive Services Task Force and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services as in existence on the day before the date or the enactment of this Act shall be considered to be recommendations.

The bill goes on to say that they must use that in the calculation of benefits. Guess what? Forty-seven thousand women who are under the age of 50 today will be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer because of your bill. It's in your bill. It's in your language. Do you know what that means? Eighty percent of them will die because of their diagnosis.

Do you realize that more women will die because of this bill than we lost men in the Korean War? And I know you think, Oh, scare tactics.

No. It's the bill. But do you know what? You can't read it on page 1 or 2. You have to keep going back and forth in 2,000 pages to understand the full impact of what will happen to women who are 40 to 49 years old.

You did it in your bill.

I am going to plead with you. For the lives of 37,000 women who will die and 47,000 women, according to the recommendations of this task force which you make law----

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. I am going to plead with you, please read the bill, not just 1 to 2,000. Go back to the other sections and understand its full impact.

And you say, It won't happen in America. Guess what? This task force recommendation resulted on December 2 in California prohibiting low-income women under the age of 50 from receiving mammograms. It is happening today. This task force is doing it today. With your bill, it becomes law. They are prohibited. And it is illegal for them to get coverage other than what the government says they can get. And guess what? Mammograms don't qualify for women 40 to 49. Please think of those women and those families.

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