Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. I will make sure those comments that were made for the Record will be delivered to the Senator personally.

I want to reiterate some points I made yesterday about my amendment and I will also share with my colleagues, I know the Senator from Texas mentioned it as well, the CBO score we received late last evening. It provides us with a score showing a cost savings of $1.4 billion over the next 10 years. I think this is significant, as Members, certainly from the other side, raised the importance of fiscal discipline and our fiduciary responsibility here. Importantly, the CBO indicated the provisions on the second page which prevent the Secretary from using the recommendations of the USPSTF to deny coverage would cost money which means we are protecting certain benefits and that is very important.

The amendment we will have before us, the Murkowski amendment, is one that allows or requires a level of transparency with the recommended health screenings, prevention services that are deemed necessary not by some task force that is appointed by folks within the administration, not by some commission that has political relationships. What we are urging is that the health screenings, the preventive services, be determined by those who are actually in the field, those practitioners--those who are engaged in oncology, OB/GYNs. We need to be looking to the experts. We need to be looking to that peer-reviewed science. We don't need to be looking to those entities that have been brought together by a government entity or by the Secretary. We need to be looking to the likes of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Radiation Oncology, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. We need to look to their recommendations.

Again, as I mentioned yesterday in my comments, if you go to their Web sites, if you look to their specific recommendations, they will give guidance, guidance that, again, is based on their practice in oncology, their practice as an OB/GYN. Look to what they set out as the guidelines for cervical cancer screening, for mammograms, and let that information be made available publicly through the pamphlets, the plans that come together from the insurance companies. But allow them--allow me, as a consumer of health care, me as a consumer looking for the best plan for me and my family--to know what those guidelines are, not from a government task force but from those who are the real experts. I think this is the transparency that health care shoppers are looking for.

Some have suggested: Lisa, your amendment doesn't require the insurance companies to provide any prevention or screening services. There is no mandate in there. If we do not have a mandate, then the insurance companies are not going to provide health care prevention and screening services.

I think we need to ask the question here, what is the point of prevention? It is to prevent more expensive care in the future by preventing the chronic and more acute illnesses. So should not the insurance companies want to utilize more preventive services, utilize more screenings, more wellness services, in order to keep down the costs of care based on the judgment of the doctors, based on the judgment of the professionals, and not necessarily those who, again, are part of a government entity?

I know within my staff I have a member who is on the FEHBP plan, but they contact her on a somewhat regular basis about her diabetes care, ensuring she is taking her medications, getting the necessary preventive services offered by her insurer for her particular condition.

It has been mentioned by several of my colleagues that this USPSTF is not such a bad group of guys, they are not just these nameless, faceless bureaucrats. I think it is important to recognize, and even the American Heart Association has recognized it, that the Preventive Services Task Force is limited to only primary care doctors and not specialists such as the oncologists, the cancer doctors who see patients every day battling cancer. These doctors who are providing Americans with their suggestions on what services are necessary for cancer screenings, but yet these doctors are not part of this task force, have again shone the spotlight on what happens when you have a government entity or government task force that is basically the one saying this is what is going to be covered, this is not what is going to be covered. In my amendment, we specifically provide that the recommendations from USPSTF cannot be used to deny coverage of an item or service by a group health plan or health insurance offeror. I think that is very important.

I think it is also important to recognize that what we do in my amendment is make sure the health plans consult the recommendations and guidelines of the professional medical organizations to determine what prevention benefits should be covered by these health insurance plans throughout the country. We also require plans to provide this information directly to the individuals. You get to see it for yourself. You get to make that determination. So what that means is the doctors and the specialists will be recommending what preventive services to cover, not those in Washington, DC.

My amendment ensures that the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall not use any of the recommendations, again made by the task force, to deny coverage. We also include broad protections to prevent bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services from denying care to patients based on comparative effectiveness research. And finally, we have a provision that ensures the Secretary of Health and Human Services may not define or classify abortion or abortion services as preventive care or as preventive services.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I appreciate that. I think my amendment is straightforward. I think it is a good compromise and again it is a clear differential between what we are going to do to allow a woman to have full choice with her doctor as opposed to government telling us who we should be seeing.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the purpose of this amendment is to ensure we do not have government entities that are making those decisions we as individuals working with our doctors feel is best.

The intent behind this amendment is to ensure that those medical professional organizations, whether it is the American Society of Clinical Oncology or the American College of Surgeons or the American College of Radiation Oncology or the American Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists--those who are in the practice, those who are making the recommendations--these are the individuals we want to know are being consulted, not some entity that has been created by those of us in the government or by some administration, by some Secretary.

So what we propose with this amendment is an insurance offering, if you will. You will know fully what is part of your plan. It is you and your doctor making these decisions.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

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