Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, first of all, I wish to commend my Pacific Northwest colleague Senator Murray for taking this time to talk about these exceptionally important issues. I had a chance to listen to the thoughtful remarks of our friend from New Hampshire--3,000 miles away from the Pacific Northwest--and she has been, as usual, extraordinarily eloquent and passionate about the cause of women's health, and it is great to be able to follow her.

We can sum up the healthcare policy of the Trump administration in just one word: discrimination. I am here with my colleagues today to discuss a particularly alarming example of the Trump agenda of healthcare discrimination and an example of where the administration is working overtime to make women's healthcare worse.

What is particularly frustrating about this is we are dealing with a bureaucracy run amok. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has made a critical judgment. They will put ideology over the law of the land when it comes to the medical care available to the young women in its custody.

Under Director Scott Lloyd, the office has attempted to block several immigrants from exercising their freedom of choice with respect to reproductive health. It has no legal right to do so. This issue is settled law, but this hasn't stopped the Director and its agency from dragging young women into prolonged, taxpayer-funded court battles.

There are roughly 5,000 young people in the Office of Refugee Resettlement's custody. Most of them are from Central American countries. Many of these young women are survivors of sexual violence. They are on their own, and they didn't come here to have somebody else's ideology dictating their medical care. In my view, this office ought to uphold its duty to provide all the care these young women have a right to receive, and it ought to check the ideology at the door.

That is not how the Office of Refugee Resettlement is working under Mr. Lloyd. According to a recent report from VICE News, ``Mr. Lloyd receives a spreadsheet every week containing information on every pregnant teen in their custody.''

He reportedly sought to interfere in a young woman's medical procedure that was actually already underway. In another case, the report says he put a young woman at further risk by directing staff to inform her parents--against her wishes--that she had an abortion.

Last fall, an HHS official was asked about Mr. Lloyd's direction of the office and the matter of interfering in the medical care of young women. Here is what that spokesman said: ``He by law has custody of these children, just like a foster parent, he knows that that's a lot of responsibility and he is going to make choices that he thinks are best for both the mother and the child.''

I say to my colleagues, that is just rampant government paternalism summed up in just one sentence.

Now, it ought to be no surprise, given his background, that this is the direction the office is taking. This is a gentleman who has made a career out of opposing the right of women to make their own judgments about their own healthcare choices. He has fought access to contraception and to a variety of healthcare services that are important to women. His views are right in line--right in line--with this administration's agenda of healthcare discrimination against women.

Right out of the gate, the administration and Republicans in Congress pushed for legislation that would have deprived hundreds of thousands of women the right to see the doctor of their choosing. They made it harder for many of those women to obtain routine, vital medical care from providers like Planned Parenthood, including cancer screenings, prenatal care, preventive services, physicals, and a whole host of preventive services that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion-- nothing to do with abortion.

Then the Trump administration sought to deny women guaranteed, no- cost access to contraception. When women have guaranteed access to contraception, it means healthier pregnancies, healthier newborns, a lower risk of cancer, and, particularly, economic fairness for women of modest means, but the Trump administration wants to unravel that guarantee as well.

Then, the Trump team is green-lighting junk insurance policies that drive up the cost of healthcare for women with preexisting conditions, and they are involved in very elaborate--as my colleague knows-- discussions with the State of Idaho. People ought to understand exactly what the Trump administration is saying to Idaho because they are going to say it to other people. The Trump administration is saying to Idaho: You can discriminate, just don't be too obvious about it. That is their position with respect to these junk insurance policies.

The administration is exploring ways to place lifetime limits on the care people can get from Medicaid, and that is a frightful proposition for the millions of older women who count on Medicaid to pick up the tab for their nursing and home-based care.

These are serious healthcare problems around this country. By the way, we never heard anything in the campaign of 2016 about how we were going to turn back the clock on older women for whom Medicaid is often a lifeline for long-term care, but that is what we are dealing with now. These are serious healthcare challenges women face right now--on top of it, a raging epidemic of opioid misuse and abuse and the skyrocketing cost of prescription medicine. When we are talking about the Office of Refugee Resettlement, as my colleagues talked about so eloquently, there is also a lot to be done to fix our broken immigration system.

Finally, it is important, as we get into these issues, to recognize how deep-seated this policy of healthcare discrimination is. The example my colleagues are talking about here today is an example of massive ideological overreach and paternalism. It is happening at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, but it is not the only example. This is behavior that ought to stop.

I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, who has been our go-to person for years and years on women's healthcare. I want her and our colleagues to know that I will be doing everything I can to be a part of their efforts to push back on these policies that turn back the clock and particularly discriminate against the rights of women.

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