[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 60 (Wednesday, May 13, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4772-S4773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         EQUITY IN PRESCRIPTION AND CONTRACEPTION COVERAGE ACT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday's USA Today headline: ``Viagra 
heightens insurance hopes for comfort care.'' The first paragraph says:

       While health insurers try to decide whether to pay for the 
     impotence drug Viagra, a poll shows half of Americans think 
     men should pay for it themselves.

  Mr. President, I will bet those half are women. Women have really 
been treated unfairly in this. Senator Olympia Snowe and I introduced 
legislation last May, the Equity in Prescription and Contraception 
Coverage Act, which in effect said that health care providers that 
provide prescription drugs should also provide contraceptives.
  We have waited a year. We have not been able to even get a hearing on 
this. The reason I am here today is to speak for American women who 
have been treated so unfairly by male-dominated legislatures for the 
last many decades.
  Women pay about 70 percent more for their health care than do men, 
mostly related to reproductive problems. We have a situation where we 
have 3.6 million unintended pregnancies in this country every year. And 
45 percent of them wind up in abortions. We find these insurance 
companies, these health care providers, will pay for a tubal ligation, 
they will pay for abortions, they will pay for a vasectomy, but they 
will not provide money for the pill.
  An average pregnancy, unintended pregnancy, in this country costs an 
average of about $1,700. I say, why can't

[[Page S4773]]

we talk about something other than what helps men? Viagra is in all the 
newspapers, trying to make a decision as to whether or not insurance 
companies should pay for this. Why don't we talk about why insurance 
companies shouldn't pay for contraceptives, health care providers 
shouldn't pay for contraceptives? It seems that would be a step in the 
right direction. Over half of the insurance companies, health care 
providers, do not cover this.
  Our legislation, that of the senior Senator from Maine and me, would 
require insurers, HMOs, and employee health benefit plans that offer 
prescription drug benefits to cover contraceptive drugs approved by the 
FDA. This is long overdue.
  I am just telling everyone here that if we do not have the benefit of 
some hearings on this--the senior Senator from Maine and I have written 
letters, and we have asked people, and we cannot get the benefit of a 
hearing. This should not be. It would seem to me we should have a 
hearing with the Labor and Human Resources Committee.
  I have had the benefit of speaking to the senior Senator from 
Pennsylvania, who has been very concerned about issues like this in the 
past. And at last resort, we will go to the Appropriations Committee 
and have a hearing there. We should not have it there, but at last 
resort we will have it there. I do not think it is appropriate that we 
have to legislate on appropriations bills, but as a member of the 
Appropriations Committee, on this, I am going to offer an amendment on 
the appropriate bill if we do not get some action by the proper 
authorizing committee. This is simply unfair--unfair--what is going on.

  The same newspaper yesterday, in a different article, said:

       Health insurers that cover the new impotence drug Viagra 
     but don't pay for female contraception are guilty of ``gender 
     bias,'' says the American College of Obstetricians and 
     Gynecologists today.
       ``Pregnancy is a medical condition, just like impotence. 
     And the cost benefit of preventing pregnancy is much greater 
     than treating impotence,'' says ACOG spokeswoman Luella Klein 
     of Emory University.

  Mr. President, it simply is unfair. Over this last decade, we have 
moved forward a little bit with the help of the junior Senator from 
Maryland, Senator Mikulski. She and I have worked together. We now have 
a program at the National Institutes of Health that deals with women's 
conditions.
  But, Mr. President, over the years diseases that afflict women have 
been ignored. Interstitial cystitis--it is a disease that afflicts 
500,000 women in America, a very serious disease of the bladder--until 
8 years ago, there was not a penny spent on it for research. They said 
it was in a woman's head. They learned that is not the case. Now, as a 
result of work done at the National Institutes of Health, they have a 
drug that cures the effects of this on 40 percent of the women.
  Multiple sclerosis, intercervical and ovarian cancer, and breast 
cancer, and lupus--these diseases, for research, are basically ignored 
because they are diseases basically related to women principally.
  I am saying here, this is really unfair what is going on here. We are 
spending so much time with all kinds of jokes on all the talk radio 
programs, all the TV programs, about Viagra. But it is not a joke that 
we have over 3.6 million unintended pregnancies, with 44 percent ending 
in abortion, in this country. And a lot of them are caused simply--in 
fact, the majority of them--simply because women cannot afford things 
like the pill.
  We have to do something. Not only does it affect that, Mr. President, 
but a reduction in unintended pregnancies will lead to a reduction in 
infant mortality, low-birth-weight babies, and maternal morbidity. In 
fact, the National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality determined 
that, ``Infant mortality could be reduced by [more than] 10 percent if 
all women not desiring pregnancy used contraception.''
  So I think it is, again, unfair that tubal ligation, abortion, 
vasectomies, are covered and the pill, contraceptives, and 
contraceptive devices are not covered. In my opinion, we need to move 
this forward. We have the support of approximately 35 Senators in this 
body. We need a hearing, and we need to have this legislation passed.
  I express my appreciation to the Senator from New York for allowing 
me to go before him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.

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