[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    DETECTING BREAST CANCER EARLIER

  (Ms. HAHN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. HAHN. Mr. Speaker, today, African American women with breast 
cancer are 40 percent more likely to die from the disease than White 
women. In my hometown of Los Angeles, African American women are 70 
percent more likely to die from breast cancer than White women. This is 
tragic and shameful.
  I have heard heartbreaking stories of women who were not able to 
access screening until it was too late or who could not receive 
treatment because they did not have health insurance.
  I have introduced a resolution here in Congress to recognize this 
alarming disparity and to raise nationwide awareness of this crisis in 
our health care system. My hope is that greater awareness of this issue 
will help to be the impetus for action and help improve the way we 
treat breast cancer for all women.
  This is an issue of life and death, and we must do everything we can 
to ensure that every woman, regardless of race, has access to the 
quality screening and treatment she needs to fight this awful disease.
  The good news is that now, under the Affordable Care Act, which my 
colleagues on the other side said was the worst law ever written in the 
history of man, lifesaving mammograms are covered for women in this 
country, allowing them to detect breast cancer early.

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