[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16667-16668]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday I read an excellent column in the 
New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the complete text of which I ask 
unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page 16668]]



                [From the New York Times, Nov. 2, 2013]

                     This is Why We Need Obamacare

                        (By Nicholas D. Kristof)

       The biggest health care crisis in America right now is not 
     the inexcusably messy rollout of Obamacare.
       No, far more serious is the kind of catastrophe facing 
     people like Richard Streeter, 47, a truck driver and 
     recreational vehicle repairman in Eugene, Ore. His problem 
     isn't Obamacare, but a tumor in his colon that may kill him 
     because Obamacare didn't come quite soon enough.
       Streeter had health insurance for decades, but beginning in 
     2008 his employer no longer offered it as an option. He says 
     he tried to buy individual health insurance but, as a 
     lifelong smoker in his late 40s, couldn't find anything 
     affordable--so he took a terrible chance and did without.
       At the beginning of this year, Streeter began to notice 
     blood in his bowel movements and discomfort in his rectum. 
     Because he didn't have health insurance, he put off going to 
     the doctor and reassured himself it was just irritation from 
     sitting too many hours.
       ``I thought it was driving a truck and being on your 
     keister all day,'' he told me. Finally, the pain became 
     excruciating, and he went to a cut-rate clinic where a 
     doctor, without examining him, suggested it might be 
     hemorrhoids.
       By September, Streeter couldn't stand the pain any longer. 
     He went to another doctor, who suggested a colonoscopy. The 
     cheapest provider he could find was Dr. J. Scott Gibson, a 
     softhearted gastroenterologist who told him that if he didn't 
     have insurance he would do it for $300 down and $300 more 
     whenever he had the money.
       Streeter made the 100-mile drive to Dr. Gibson's office in 
     McMinnville, Ore.--and received devastating news. Dr. Gibson 
     had found advanced colon cancer.
       ``It was heartbreaking to see the pain on his face,'' Dr. 
     Gibson told me. ``It got me very angry with people who insist 
     that Obamacare is a train wreck, when the real train wreck is 
     what people are experiencing every day because they can't 
     afford care.''
       Dr. Gibson says that Streeter is the second patient he has 
     had this year who put off getting medical attention because 
     of lack of health insurance and now has advanced colon 
     cancer.
       So, to those Republicans protesting Obamacare: You're right 
     that there are appalling problems with the website, but they 
     will be fixed. Likewise, you're right that President Obama 
     misled voters when he said that everyone could keep their 
     insurance plan because that's now manifestly not true 
     (although they will be able to get new and better plans, 
     sometimes for less money).
       But how about showing empathy also for a far larger and 
     more desperate group: The nearly 50 million Americans without 
     insurance who play health care Russian roulette as a result. 
     FamiliesUSA, a health care advocacy group that supports 
     Obamacare, estimated last year that an American dies every 20 
     minutes for lack of insurance.
       It has been a year since my college roommate, Scott 
     Androes, died of prostate cancer, in part because he didn't 
     have insurance and thus didn't see a doctor promptly. Scott 
     fully acknowledged that he had made a terrible mistake in 
     economizing on insurance, but, in a civilized country, is 
     this a mistake that people should die from?
       ``Website problems are a nuisance,'' Dr. Gibson said. 
     ``Life and death is when you need care and can't afford to 
     get it.''
       The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council 
     this year ranked the United States health care system last or 
     near last in several categories among 17 countries studied. 
     The Commonwealth Fund put the United States dead last of 
     seven industrialized countries in health care performance. 
     And Bloomberg journalists ranked the United States health 
     care system No. 46 in efficiency worldwide, behind Romania 
     and Iran.
       The reason is simple: While some Americans get superb care, 
     tens of millions without insurance get marginal care. That's 
     one reason life expectancy is relatively low in America, and 
     child mortality is twice as high as in some European 
     countries. Now that's a scandal.
       Yet about half the states are refusing to expand Medicaid 
     to cover more uninsured people--because they don't trust 
     Obamacare and want it to fail. The result will be more 
     catastrophes like Streeter's.
       ``I am tired of being the messenger of death,'' said Dr. 
     Gibson. ``Sometimes it's unavoidable. But when people come in 
     who might have been saved if they could have afforded care 
     early on, then to have to tell them that they have a 
     potentially fatal illness--I'm very tired of that.''
       Streeter met with a radiologist on Thursday and is bracing 
     for an arduous and impoverishing battle with the cancer. 
     There's just one bright spot: He signed up for health care 
     insurance under Obamacare, to take effect on Jan. 1.
       For him, the tragedy isn't that the Obamacare rollout has 
     been full of glitches, but that it may have come too late to 
     save his life.

  Mr. REID. The editorial tells the story of a number of people, but 
one is about Richard Streeter, a truck driver who is very ill with 
colon cancer. Why? Because he couldn't afford insurance; he couldn't 
afford health insurance. Kristof writes:

       The biggest health care crisis in America right now is not 
     the inexcusably messy rollout of ObamaCare. No, far more 
     serious is the kind of catastrophe facing people like Richard 
     Streeter.

  Mr. Streeter is a resident of Eugene, OR. His problem is not 
ObamaCare but a tumor in his colon that is going to kill him unless 
there is a miracle. He could have been treated had he had health 
insurance. For him, ObamaCare did not come quite soon enough.
  Kristof's column is an important reminder that the rollout of 
ObamaCare is about more than a defective Web site, it is about saving 
lives, lots of lives. Kristof is reminding Republicans that they should 
have empathy for ``the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance 
who play health care Russian roulette [every day] as a result.''
  He urges them, the Republicans, to remember that every 20 minutes an 
American dies. Why? They lack health insurance.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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