[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 98 (Friday, June 26, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1621-E1622]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




``A VISION FOR HEALTH CARE'' COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY SENATOR RICHARD T. 
                                 MOORE

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. MICHAEL E. CAPUANO

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 26, 2009

  Mr. CAPUANO. Madam Speaker, my friend, Senator Richard T. Moore was 
honored recently at the commencement of the New England College of 
Optometry. I wanted to share his remarks, as his address justly paid 
tribute to the school, its faculty, and graduates for their commitment 
to public service.

                        A Vision for Health Care

       President Chen, Chairman Manfredi, Vice Chairman Ferrucci 
     (my friend and personal Optometrist), Members of the Board of 
     Trustees, parents, alumni, friends, and most especially, my 
     fellow graduates of the Class of 2009 . . . I'm honored to 
     share in your celebration today and to receive a degree from 
     this prestigious institution with its well-deserved 
     reputation for improving access to care, enhancing the 
     quality of life by preventing blindness, and developing 
     innovative, economically viable models of eye care.
       Visus per mentem, vision through the mind, has long been 
     the motto of this great College. It is a phrase that reflects 
     a sincere commitment to learn the skills and knowledge 
     necessary to serve others, as well as a deeply felt belief 
     that you can help people to see the world with more clarity 
     and purpose--to give in a way, the gift of sight--or at least 
     improved vision. Hopefully, your clinical experience working 
     at the New England Eye Institute and in community health 
     centers and school or elderly vision clinics, has kindled in 
     you to a desire to devote some portion of your time, treasure 
     and talent to bring quality eye care to the underserved of 
     our society.
       Few, if any of you, in the Class of 2009 could have 
     attended New England College of Optometry for four or more 
     years without deriving from your studies, from your 
     outstanding instructors and most of all from your own inner 
     hearts some sense of inspiration and idealism as well as an 
     appreciation of your social responsibility as a newly-minted 
     health care professional.


                Continue the Legacy of Community Service

       Graduates of New England College of Optometry who preceded 
     you have blazed a trail of community service through vision 
     research and care that is almost legendary! They left an 
     inspiring legacy upon which you and your classmates can now 
     build. With your OD degree in hand, challenge yourselves to 
     follow in the footsteps of exemplary alumni such as Charlie 
     Mullen OD ``69 (who addressed you a few moments ago) and 
     Kenneth Myers OD ``74, who firmly established vision care as 
     a focus of the U.S. Veterans Administration. Their pioneering 
     work is, today, helping wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq 
     and Afghanistan to see beyond the trauma of war and return to 
     productive lives in our communities.
       Then, there's Edward Goodnig OD ``76. He brought his 
     knowledge and skills to underserved regions expanding primary 
     care opportunities for Alaska's Native American settlements 
     and schools. You may also know of Frank Thorn OD ``79, 
     today's Commencement Marshal and an expert on the causes and 
     development of Myopia, who has shared his professional 
     knowledge and restless energy from this campus on the banks 
     of the Charles River to remote villages in the Amazon Rain 
     Forest and--in Marco Polo fashion--from Europe to China. 
     Their exciting and fulfilling careers, chronicled in the 
     College's 2008 Annual Report, offer a glimpse of the 
     potential that awaits you as today's graduates.
       Such stories of successful graduates can teach, they can 
     offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot 
     supply the courage to follow your own path. For that each of 
     you must look into your own hearts. Accept your degrees today 
     with the same pride, enthusiasm, and commitment that launched 
     those pioneers of Optometry into rewarding lives of caring 
     service.


                 Continue to Learn and Share Knowledge

       Never be too busy to keep from learning how to better serve 
     your patients. That includes sharing your real world 
     knowledge of your patients and the condition of their eyes 
     with those involved in academic research here at New England 
     College of Optometry and elsewhere. It also means staying 
     informed about the rapidly changing science of your 
     profession. Each of you, my fellow graduates, as our newest 
     health care professionals, have a responsibility to continue 
     your education by maintaining competency in vision care and 
     in the technology necessary to deliver the best quality of 
     care to all who seek better vision.
       Whether your career takes you to remote regions of America 
     or the world, or takes you back to wherever you may call 
     ``home,'' remember one of the basic concepts that you learned 
     here in the Back Bay, that eye care professionals are an 
     integral part of the team of primary care providers, and 
     deserve to be treated with the same degree of 
     professional respect as any other health care 
     professional! In this era of health care reform, each of 
     you will play an essential role in not only diagnosing and 
     treating conditions of the eye, but you will also serve as 
     part of the team of professional caregivers who assist and 
     support each other for the benefit of every patient.


                Massachusetts as a Model for the Nation

       For the past four years, as each of you have been immersed 
     in becoming competent, dedicated vision care professionals in 
     the classrooms at 424 Beacon Street, I've been learning the 
     lessons of health care reform about a mile away in the State 
     House meeting rooms at 24 Beacon Street. The grades are now 
     in, and the results are clearly informing the growing 
     national debate on health care. Massachusetts is leading the 
     way in health care reform! We are:
       First in the nation in health care access.
       First in electronic health records and e-prescribing.
       In the forefront of patient safety, quality improvement, 
     and cost containment.
       Leading the way in prescription drug ethics.
       In just three years, 432,000 Massachusetts residents, who 
     were previously un-insured, have gained access to health care 
     and the many stories of lives saved or improved are truly 
     heart-warming.


               Optometry's Contribution to Health Reform

       One of the challenges facing Massachusetts and the Nation 
     in fully realizing the health improvement and cost savings 
     benefits of health care reform is the need to expand patient 
     access to primary care. It is just as important--and less 
     expensive--to keep people healthy, as well as to treat those 
     who are ill. We have made great progress in expanding access 
     to health insurance for the people of Massachusetts, but 
     there is still an unmet need for easy access to primary care 
     providers. I believe that optometrists, such as each of you, 
     are ready--even anxious--to help to fill some of that void.
       To address this challenge, those who pay for health care 
     need to embrace new payment models that support wellness as 
     well as coordinating care for those who suffer from illness, 
     injury or less than good health. Any such wellness effort 
     needs to include regular screening--such as vision 
     screening--and be coordinated with health information 
     technology such as through a centralized vision care 
     registry.
       Major stakeholders in health care reform obviously include 
     the physician community. The Massachusetts Medical Society, 
     the oldest, continuously operating state medical society in 
     the United States, is the primary voice of physicians in the 
     development of public policy. However, it sometimes seems to 
     me that the society's policy positions have evolved far more 
     slowly than the progress of science itself.
       An old baseball player once said, ``I don't question the 
     integrity of an umpire, just his eyesight.'' Similarly, I 
     don't question the integrity of our state medical society, 
     just their vision! As fewer medical doctors enter the field 
     of primary care, the medical profession needs to embrace 
     other health professionals who, with appropriate training 
     such as that provided by the New England College of 
     Optometry, can do much to provide safe, cost-effective care 
     for patients needing attention.
       It's high time for all Massachusetts physicians to rise 
     above the tradition-bound guild-mentality that confounds 
     health care progress, and respect the education and 
     experience of all health professions in treating the whole 
     person. It's time for Massachusetts to embrace treatment 
     regimens for optometrists that are already fully accepted in 
     49 other states, if we are to offer quality care that is 
     convenient and affordable for patients. You, the Class of 
     2009, must make your voices heard as that debate unfolds!
       It was Robert Kennedy who once challenged an earlier 
     graduating class at another college--``to decide, as Goethe 
     put it, whether you will be a hammer--or an anvil. The 
     question is whether you are to be a hammer--whether you are 
     to give to the world in which you were reared and educated, 
     the broadest possible benefits of that education.'' So I 
     challenge you to get involved in writing the health care 
     policy of your generation--be a hammer!


                  A Vision for Health Care in America

       You are graduating at a most exciting time in health care! 
     As you begin your professional careers in vision care, health 
     reform is about to take center stage in the national arena. 
     National health reform is likely to include minimum standards 
     for benefits, an individual insurance mandate, a guaranteed 
     issue requirement for health insurance, a prohibition on 
     excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions, the creation 
     of an insurance exchange where people can sign up for 
     coverage--all factors that are included in the Massachusetts 
     health reform effort.

[[Page E1622]]

       If we view health reform through the lens of the ongoing 
     Massachusetts experiment, there are some fundamental 
     principles to anchor the national effort.
       1. Each of us has an individual responsibility to take care 
     of our health--including screenings and check-ups, as well as 
     maintaining health insurance to help pay for our care and 
     that of our families.
       2. Each of us has a collective responsibility, as citizens 
     of a caring society, to support public policies that 
     guarantee access to safe, high quality, affordable and 
     patient-centered health care for everyone in society.
       3. Each of us, in the field of health care, has a 
     professional responsibility to strive for the highest level 
     of competency, to ensure that we, and our colleagues in the 
     patient care team, deliver the right care at the right time 
     and in the right place.
       These principles can serve as a shining beacon for health 
     reform in the nation, much as this Commonwealth led the 
     nation in propagating the principles of democratic 
     government, social progress, and educational excellence 
     throughout its proud history.
       Massachusetts'' first Governor, John Winthrop, wrote in 
     1630 about the social experiment being launched in this New 
     World. He called upon his Puritan brethren and all their 
     descendants to share their resources and gifts with others, 
     ``rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together 
     so that--``the world will say of succeeding plantations, may 
     the Lord make it like that of New England . . . we shall be 
     as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.'' 
     Sharing our gifts with others is the cornerstone of health 
     care reform in Massachusetts and, I hope, it will be your 
     personal cornerstone in your health care careers as well.
       Truly, the eyes of all people in America are focused on the 
     Massachusetts health reform experience as a framework for 
     bringing expanded access to quality care to all Americans. 
     But that's not all we're contributing to health care. This 
     morning, Massachusetts is sending forth from this city upon a 
     hill, a new class of highly skilled, and energized health 
     care professionals with their degree in optometry in hand!
       While past experience may teach us to be skeptical of the 
     promises of any politician, to those of you who will dedicate 
     your health care careers to the betterment of your state and 
     all her people--I can promise a lifetime of challenge and 
     opportunity, sometimes exciting and rewarding, sometimes slow 
     and difficult, but always, always worthwhile.
       And let me add one final bit of parting wisdom: No one ever 
     injured his or her eyesight by looking on the bright side of 
     things! The economy will improve! You'll earn a good living! 
     And those of us in government can't wait to share in your 
     success every April 15th!

                          ____________________