[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 138 (Monday, September 30, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1860]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              BREAST CANCER PATIENT PROTECTION ACT OF 1996

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                          HON. JOHN D. DINGELL

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                      Saturday, September 28, 1996

  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to join my colleague, 
Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, in introducing the Breast 
Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1996. This legislation seeks to ensure 
that women and doctors--not insurance company bureaucrats--will decide 
how long a woman who has a mastectomy should remain in the hospital.
  Breast cancer is physically and emotionally devastating. As Abigail 
Trafford stated in the Washington Post, ``Breast cancer holds a unique 
place in the constellation of diseases. First, because it involves the 
breast, it challenges not just a woman's life, but her identity. [The 
breast] is the functioning symbol of motherhood and nurturing the 
young.''
  For any woman, facing breast cancer is one of her most frightening 
experiences. Learning that she must have a mastectomy, a surgical 
procedure that will change her body and her life, can be traumatic. An 
insurance company insults a woman facing one of life's great crises 
when it decrees that she must leave the hospital whether she is healed 
or not.
  I realize that this legislation has little chance of enactment before 
this Congress concludes. Representative DeLauro and I, along with many 
other Members, have placed this on the table because we wanted every 
member of this body to think about it for the next 3 months. At the 
beginning of the 105th Congress, we will introduce similar legislation. 
It is our intention over this time to research the best, most effective 
ways to accomplish the bill's goals. That includes making sure we do 
not preempt responsible State legislation and that we define health 
plans to be consistent with the Kassebuam-Kennedy health insurance 
reform bill and with the MOMS bill providing 48-hour maternity stays 
that I introduced earlier this year, which was enacted as part of the 
VA-HUD appropriation bill.
  Whether a patient is a young woman giving birth to a baby, or a woman 
having surgery to treat breast cancer, insurers have no right to 
interfere in decisions about treatments that are medically necessary 
and appropriate. This legislation seeks to make care, rather than cost, 
the driving principle of our health care system.

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