[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 5955]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I rise near the end of this very 
important and profoundly significant budget debate to make some points 
not only about the dollars and cents in our health care system, but 
also to speak about a growing and persistent threat--the threat of 
irresponsible cutbacks to vital health care services for our Nation's 
most vulnerable--in the name of an ideological war on women's health 
care.
  Our Nation is in the midst of a fiscal crisis. We need to recognize 
that there is a very immediate and important imperative to cut the 
costs of health care in this country. The costs of health care are 
spiraling out of control at a rate five times the rate of inflation.
  The President, commendably, is talking about the need for serious 
measures and sensible conversation about what can be done to control 
and reduce the costs of health care. Just this week, the administration 
initiated Partnership for Patients, which is another step in the 
President's continuing efforts, and I believe this body's continuing 
efforts, to prevent and reduce needless costs to our health care 
system. For example, reducing the incidence of re-admissions to 
hospitals and providing for better outpatient treatment after people 
are out of the hospital; reducing the incidence of hospital inquired 
infections; to reducing the incidence of overprescription--or 
misprescribed drugs--these kinds of costs are preventable. We have an 
obligation to reduce those costs in health care when they are 
preventable.
  Higher quality at lower cost has to be our objective. And, lowering 
costs also means preventive care for women when they cannot afford it. 
That is what Planned Parenthood does. The threat of H. Con. Res. 36 is 
to that profoundly important goal--higher quality health care at lower 
cost--that we can achieve as a nation if we invest in preventive care.
  The threat of H. Con. Res. 36 is, therefore, not only to the 1.4 
million Medicaid patients across the country who would be deprived of 
that preventive care, and not only to the more than 60,000 women in 
Connecticut who are at risk, but to all of us, to our families, and to 
our fiscal health. We know Planned Parenthood saves $4 for every $1 
invested. Smart investments that go to provide the Pap smears, breast 
exams, and other kinds of preventive health care that not only save our 
health care system money, but that are an absolutely critical part of 
high quality health care in the United States.
  But this debate is about more than costs. It is about human beings. 
It is about those women who need that preventive care for their future 
and their family's futures and eventually for their children's futures. 
Every woman across our Nation, including 1.4 million Medicaid patients 
who consider Planned Parenthood their primary source for preventive 
health, deserves to visit a health care provider she trusts--a health 
care provider that many of us have in this body whether we are men or 
women.
  I am talking about women such as Rebecca in Meriden, CT. Rebecca's 
parents' health coverage did not extend to her, and she made too much 
money to qualify for Connecticut's Husky Program--too much money 
meaning $10 an hour and working part time, a total of $10,000--too much 
money to qualify for Husky. She depended on Planned Parenthood for 
regular health screenings and contraceptive care. As she said in her 
own words:

       Planned Parenthood was my saving grace for my reproductive 
     health.

  Women such as Maya, a 23-year-old uninsured young woman, a waitress, 
part time, doing an unpaid internship for a nonprofit organization. She 
went to Planned Parenthood for her routine Pap smear, and the results 
showed abnormal cells that required a biopsy and an operation to have 
the precancerous cells removed. That procedure could have been 
lifesaving for Maya; as are all of the routine screenings that Planned 
Parenthood provides for countless women across the country and in 
Connecticut. All of these procedures take place day in and day out 
around Connecticut, for a price they can afford. These stories from 
Rebecca and Maya are heard around our Nation, at least 60,000 strong in 
Connecticut alone.
  As Martin Masselli, Community Health Center advocate and the 
president of Community Health Care, Inc. in Middletown, recently said:

       Defunding Planned Parenthood would be the moral equivalent 
     of turning off the electricity and a whole segment of health 
     care would go dark.

  That is what H. Con. Res. 36 means in human terms. In dollars and 
cents: preventive health care, the kind of work done by St. Vincent's 
in Bridgeport and Hartford Hospital, and Yale-New Haven hosptial, and 
countless others around the State and in the country because our 
hospitals and health care providers are responding responsibly to the 
need for higher quality and lower costs. We must preserve the momentum 
to move forward and to make sure the promise, as well as the 
obligation, the opportunity as well as the mandate, is fulfilled.
  I call for my Senate colleagues to stand together for women such as 
Rebecca and Maya and for clinics and hospitals and providers across the 
Nation who depend on Planned Parenthood and to reject this resolution, 
to reject the effort to turn back the clock and to settle this debate 
once and for all, to end the ideological war which has itself nothing 
to do with saving money; that in fact, will cost more than it saves. I 
call for us to turn our attention, as we should and we must, to people 
who want us to put America back to work to create jobs, to foster 
economic growth, to fulfill the mandate that was articulated and 
expressed so eloquently by the people of this country in this last 
election, which was not to wage war on women's health.
  The message was to put Connecticut and put America back to work, 
create jobs and continue our fragile economic recovery.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________