Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 23, 2005)
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Mr. WICKER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Regula) for yielding me this time.
I join the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Regula) in opposing the Owens amendment and would submit to my colleagues that this amendment offers this very straightforward question to Members of the House today: whether to continue the effective job that the Centers for Disease Control are doing currently to fight tuberculosis in the United States or whether, on the other hand, to adopt the Owens amendment and implement an expensive new regulation to allow OSHA to become involved in infectious disease control. That is the basic question.
I know that many of us in the House of Representatives and many people across the country are concerned about the issue of rising health care costs. And I will tell the Members that this amendment, if adopted today, would increase the cost of health care for Americans. It may sound reasonable and narrowly drawn at first, dealing only with the fit testing of respirators used to prevent tuberculosis; but I would invite Members to call their hospital administrators and find out what they have to say about this amendment, and what they will tell them is this will be an expensive new regulation for hospitals, and it will increase health care costs for Americans.
I think most of us agree that the correct people to fight infectious disease are the health care professionals in our hospitals, and the best agency to regulate and provide guidelines for these health care professionals is the Centers for Disease Control. They have been doing it since 1992, and they have been doing a good job of it.
This amendment is a back-door method of allowing OSHA a foothold in the regulation of infectious diseases, and I do not think we want to do that today. And one reason we do not want to do it is the success of CDC.
I direct the attention of my colleagues to this chart here. I do not know if every Member can see it, but we can see that tuberculosis rates are the lowest they have been since 1953, and they continue to drop. On the other chart, "Reported TB cases in the United States, 1982 to 2003", along about 1992 when CDC started providing guidelines for our health care facilities for regulation of tuberculosis, the TB rate started to drop, and it has continuously dropped.
CDC is winning the war against tuberculosis in this country. I thank the chairman for including this in the legislation last year. It is now the law of the land. I thank the chairman for keeping the legislation this year, and I urge my colleagues to stay with a proven record in fighting tuberculosis by voting "no" on the Owens amendment.
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