[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 171 (Wednesday, December 4, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H7454-H7455]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
             THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND PREVENTIVE HEALTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, 27 years ago, I was diagnosed with ovarian 
cancer. I was lucky. I had excellent doctors who detected the cancer by 
chance in stage 1. I underwent radiation treatment for 2\1/2\ months. 
Because of the grace of God and biomedical research, I stand here 
today, and I am fortunate to say that I have been cancer free ever 
since.
  I can tell you for a fact that access to preventive health care saved 
my life. If

[[Page H7455]]

my ovarian cancer had not been diagnosed and caught in stage 1, I might 
not be here today, but many women are not so lucky as over 15,000 die 
every year from ovarian cancer. While I survived by that off chance of 
luck in that diagnosis, no one should have to survive by luck, which is 
why my Democratic colleagues and I worked hard.
  We worked very hard to make sure that prevention and wellness are 
such a critical part of the Affordable Care Act. Before we passed this 
transformative piece of legislation, one in five women over age 50 had 
not had a mammogram in the past 2 years, mostly because she could not 
afford one. Now mammograms are covered--they are covered for all 
Americans--with no out-of-pocket costs. So are annual checkups, 
colonoscopies, diabetes, and other cancer screenings--at no cost. Let 
me repeat that. They are the beneficiaries of lifesaving treatments.
  Preventive care not only helps to keep Americans healthier; it also 
helps to drive down the cost of health care so that people can get 
access to the services that they need. Chronic and often preventable 
diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, cause seven out of 10 
deaths in the United States of America, and they account for 75 percent 
of our health spending. Preventive care can help Americans avoid these 
ailments or to catch them before it is too late.
  That is what the Affordable Care Act does. That is what the people of 
this country need to know. There are countless stories, after stories, 
after stories of people's lives being saved because they have the 
opportunity to get a treatment or something that says you may be at 
risk for a particular disease, and you can get that identification not 
by luck but as a routine checkup. No one in the United States of 
America should survive by luck. Now we have an opportunity through the 
Affordable Care Act, which is the law of the land today, to make sure 
that everyone--man and woman--can get those services.
  If you expand access to preventive health, it drives the costs down, 
but most importantly, it saves lives. Isn't that worth doing, to be 
able to save someone's life? That is what the Affordable Care Act is 
all about. It is just one of the many ways that it is good for men, for 
women, for families in this Nation, and it is good for America to move 
in this direction.

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