[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 173 (Thursday, October 26, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6844-S6845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               HEALTHCARE

  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Madam President, I rise today to urge my colleagues 
to reauthorize Federal funding for the Children's Health Insurance 
Program. Children's health insurance is not a partisan issue in this 
country, and it never has been.
  In 1997, the bill to create the Children's Health Insurance Program 
passed with bipartisan support. It was introduced by the late Senator 
Ted Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and our colleague, Senator 
Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah. This program has been a resounding 
success. Tens of millions of kids from all over the country have 
received access to preventive care, doctors' visits, prescriptions, 
dental and vision coverage as a result of this act of Congress.
  Children's healthcare is not a partisan issue in Nevada--the great 
State that I represent--either. Over the past 20 years, more than 
60,000 of Nevada's kids have benefited from our State CHIP program, 
Nevada Check Up. Together with the gains we have made due to the ACA's 
Medicaid expansion, our rate of uninsured children has fallen by half, 
making our program one of the biggest successes in the country.
  Today, 9 million children from low-income families nationwide, 
including 27,000 from Nevada, get their health insurance through CHIP. 
If Congress continues to do nothing, those 9 million children will not 
be able to go to a doctor for their annual checkup; 9 million children 
will not be able to afford their prescriptions. The parents of those 9 
million children will have to wait until their child's headache or 
infection or sore throat becomes an emergency before taking them to the 
hospital.
  In 2008, the last time funding for CHIP was on the chopping block, 
Senator Ted Kennedy said that the test of a great nation is in the way 
it treats its children. We are a great nation. We know how to take care 
of our kids. Americans understand that children's healthcare is the 
kind of thing that should be beyond the reach of partisan politics.
  Governors from both parties, medical professionals, care providers, 
and advocates from across this Nation have already called on Congress 
to do its job and move as quickly as possible to reauthorize this 
funding. Nevada's Republican Governor, Brian Sandoval, is one of those 
voices. Republicans and Democrats alike know that kids can't go to 
school, they can't go to soccer practice, they can't learn their times 
tables or their fractions, they can't do things that healthy, happy 
kids like to do if they do not feel well.
  But don't ask me why funding for CHIP is important. Listen to the 
voices of parents who lie awake at night, worried that the cough they 
are hearing down the hall in their child's room will not go away on its 
own. It is scary enough to have a sick child. No parent should have to 
live with the additional fear that they will not be able to afford the 
care their child needs. No parent should have to choose between 
treating a cough that has been getting worse and worse for weeks and 
paying next month's rent. People across the country are working every 
single day just to make ends meet. CHIP is their lifeline.
  Just ask Lisa, a self-employed mom. Her children are able to see the 
whiteboard in math class because CHIP allowed her family to afford 
glasses.
  Ask Glenna, whose daughter broke her arm on the monkey bars when she 
was 4. Without CHIP, Glenna would have had to take out loans to pay off 
that medical bill.
  Hear from Vanessa about the excellent healthcare her daughter 
received after she contracted meningitis at age 12, which was paid for 
with health insurance Vanessa purchased through CHIP. Vanessa says that 
CHIP is the reason her daughter is alive today.

  These are just three of the countless stories I have heard from 
people who just don't know what they would do if private health 
insurance were the only option available to their family.
  Illness, injury, these things happen. All of us get sick sometimes, 
but going bankrupt trying to pay for your son or daughter's medical 
treatment, that is not normal. That should not be something we accept 
as part of our everyday lives.
  Every time I go home to Nevada, I hear the same things over and over 
from people I meet. They say to me: My medical bills are out of 
control. Please do something to help.
  We should be working night and day around the clock to fix our 
healthcare system and relieve the burden of healthcare costs on working 
people.
  Allowing funding for CHIP to expire, allowing State governments to go 
bankrupt, allowing rural hospitals and our community medical centers to 
shut their doors and go out of business, this is not what the American 
people sent us here to do. We are the representatives of this great 
Nation, and it is time to act like it and stop playing politics with 
children's health.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page S6845]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered 
to be printed in the Record.)

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