Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been Authorized By Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the remarks of my colleague from Missouri, Senator Blunt. I thank him for his leadership. He is in an important position as the chairperson of the Health, Education, and Labor Appropriations Subcommittee, which is responsible for appropriating funds to the Department of Health and Human Services. I serve on that subcommittee with him. He is a leader in so many ways.

I am so pleased that we are allies in this issue of life and death for Kansans and Missourians. To my colleagues on the Senate floor, it is really a life-and-death issue for many of your constituents across the country but particularly in rural areas, in the Midwest, and in the South.

The decisions that are being made have huge consequences that will affect families, individuals, and their lives today and for years to come. I express my concerns and my deeply held belief that the Department of Health and Human Services is failing to do its job. Their harmful actions will damage the liver allocation policy in this country in the way I just described.

The policy discussion we are having here today is important. It is important any day, but it is relevant since National Donor Day is this Friday, February 14.

I want to take a moment to thank those across Kansas and Missouri and around the country who have donated their organs to give that gift of life. Senator Blunt is right. I think there is a tendency on the part of people to donate an organ knowing that somebody--maybe they don't necessarily know them, but somebody who might live down the street or live in the same community or live in the same State. There is a sense of community across this country that is being destroyed. The end result of that is there will be fewer donors donating organs for the lives of others.

These changes to the United Network for Organ Sharing's distribution policy will redistribute the organs from States and regions that have high organ donor rates to areas that have historically underperformed. This results in patients in Kansas and those in the Midwest and Southern States to wait a much longer time for the organ.

I have spoken on this topic on the Senate floor before, as this destructive policy was pushed forward. I spoke in 2018. We are still here today. The lack of interest and concern exhibited by those involved in this process is appalling to me. I stand here today because of the outright refusal of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to halt the implementation of this damaging and unfair health policy that has not withstood examination by either medical experts or our Nation's judicial system. In fact, the U.S. district court has been forced to place multiple injunctions on the implementation of this policy last year as HHS tried to force this policy upon patients across the Nation, despite a lawsuit from a collection of our Nation's best transplant centers.

The organizations that are fully engaged in opposing this process are the people who transplant the organs to those who are in desperate need of it. They are the experts--the surgeons, the transplant centers in universities and hospitals across a wide swath of the country. HHS has ignored the initial injunction order and began to implement this harmful policy. They had to seek a second injunction in order force the injunction to be upheld. In explaining the court order, this district judge in the district of Georgia described the policy as ``difficult and wrenching,'' ``creating profound issues and institutional disruption'' and concluded that this policy will undoubtedly cause harm to patients, particularly those in rural areas.

There is also mounting evidence that the United Network for Organ Sharing and its CEO have acted in callous disregard for rural areas in the Midwest and South throughout the development of this policy. These are the same areas that have the highest donation rates and play an enormous role in the lifesaving transplant system. The people who live there are the ones who are being harmed.

Those who are crafting and implementing this system continually disregard the evidence that shows these areas are already suffering under the suffocating weight of HHS's new policy. As I said before, this policy tosses aside all public concerns from patients, transplant surgeons, and hospitals on best practices to improve the availability of organs across the Nation. There is no reason to have a regional fight. There are ways to do this that benefit all regions of the country.

It also carries the risk of decreasing those organ donations that will then damage everyone. This limits availability and access to donated organs and damages the ability for major transplant hospitals-- in the case of Kansas, the University of Kansas Hospital--to perform these services for patients.

This is particularly frustrating because dating back to December 2017, the board of the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network has approved an equitable liver allocation process that served the entire community's best interest. This was a necessary policy reform that took years of consideration that would benefit the entire country, based on compromise by transplant experts, patients, and important stakeholders.

That policy was abandoned. We were assured when it was abandoned by OPTN and Health Resources--or HRSA--that public comments would be considered. That policy that took years to develop and involved the valuation of experts and a give-and-take in a process was overturned so easily. We were promised we would have the opportunity for those who have concerns about this policy to have input, and the reality of that fact is that was a lie. It was not true.

Many concerns made by patients, by transplant centers, by surgeons were never considered in OPTN's rushed process to finalize the policy. The reasons they were not considered was because of the overwhelming negative response that caused the entire comment system to completely shut down. People across the country commented on it with such frequency that the ability for the telephone system to log the input crashed. Of course, did OPTN wait until they could get those comments and consider them? No, they made the decision without that input. In fact, the president of OPTN has informed many commenters in the transplant community that their concerns over the new policy were not even read by the board that approved the policy.

So the many transplant hospitals, surgeons, and medical professionals who had deep concerns and took time out of their busy days to express them were never heard. They were ignored. These are the people who are tasked with saving lives through the transplants they perform each and every day. Yet their opinions were essentially deemed invalid. It appears that HRSA's and OPTN's making policy in such a reckless fashion has become the normal state of affairs.

Despite the continual efforts by Senator Blunt and me to get Secretary Azar to review, to modify, to consider, to reconsider, or to put on hold this policy, we have had no success. Additional oversight is desperately needed to restore some semblance of common sense in the actions and policies that are being taken and deployed.

I am deeply disappointed in the actions by Secretary Azar, HRSA, OPTN, and UNOS. This process has been flawed from start to finish, guided by not what is best for the country but how best to sidestep a specific, single lawsuit. Organ procurement and allocation policy is too important to be decided in this fashion.

Secretary Azar, the University of Kansas Health System typically performs 8 to 10 liver transplants per month. Since this policy has been implemented under your administration, it has performed zero transplants. This is as a direct result of the policy. At KU Hospital, current estimates are that it may take up to 6 months before it is able to provide another one of these lifesaving donation organ operations. Meanwhile, those on the transplant list in Kansas watch their wait times grow, and their hope begins to dwindle.

This is really a lot about hope, and it is about saving lives, but if you are on a list that continually grows longer while you are waiting for that organ, what a depressing, discouraging circumstance for you and your family.

Secretary Azar's policy is causing direct harm to the people of my State. It is time that he steps up and takes responsibility for the actions of his Department, which are causing real harm to patients.

These transplant hospitals from across Missouri and Kansas and elsewhere have written the President and Secretary Azar within the last 2 weeks and have asked for a halt in the policy until we have had time to let a judge decide the issues in the court case and also to make sure that we ultimately get it right.

I call on Secretary Azar to halt the implementation of this disastrous policy and save lives from being unnecessarily lost.

Again, I thank my colleague from just across the State line, from the home of the Kansas City Chiefs, for his support in this effort. He has a voice that has to be heard and that will be heard, and I am pleased to be allied with him in his concern for the patients in my State and for the patients in his own.

I yield to the Senator from Missouri.

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