Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I rise in strong support of the Protect Women's Health Care from Corporate Interference Act.

I thank my colleague Senator Murray from Washington and my colleague Senator Udall from Colorado for introducing this bill and Senator Murray for her long championed efforts on women's health. I am very proud to support this bill.

I guess I would say to my colleague, who I know feels passionately about these issues, that the issue is really how important prescription benefits are to women's health and particularly how important contraception is to women and the fact that it is not an add-on to our health care but, rather, an essential part of our health care. So I hope it doesn't really take us getting a majority of women on the Supreme Court to convince people how central this issue is to the health care of women and why we don't want to deal with a boss who decides to say: I don't want to cover that in employee benefit packages.

I hope I and my colleagues will get a chance to vote on this legislation because I think the Supreme Court's ruling in this case 2 weeks ago really set us on a slippery slope. In a 5-to-4 decision they held that corporations can deny contraceptive coverage for women who are their employees if the owner--if the owner--professes a religious objection.

I know my colleagues think, why don't we just make this product more available so that women can pay an out-of-pocket amount for it?

It is an essential part of women's health and should be part of an employee's package and should not have to be a component she has to add on later.

This precedent by the Court is a troubling precedent. The decision threatens access to critical preventive health services for women, and it opens the door for employers to deny other health care services just because of the owner's religious beliefs.

Many of my colleagues have come to the floor and articulated how this is not about the religious exemption part of the Affordable Care Act that can be sought by churches and religious organizations; this is about employers who are corporations. So those exemptions for people who do have religious beliefs and don't want to offer these health care services are still preserved. But what is not preserved is a woman's ability to say to her employer: Why are you discriminating against me and my health care insurance that you are going to provide when you are not providing the full range of benefits for women?

So, as I said, it really is a slippery slope, and the question is, How many other things are going to be thrown into this same area?

I am getting a lot of letters. I have heard from several people from the Northwest. In fact, this one individual wrote to me saying, ``I am terrified that affordable access''--affordable access, not an add-on. Just because I am a woman and I work for an employer, now I have an add-on because you are discriminating against what my health care services are. She said, ``I am terrified that affordable access to my medically indicated preferred method of birth control may be in jeopardy due to the recent Supreme Court decision.''

So, yes, we are hearing from a lot of people that the decision imperils the ability of women to access evidence-based, clinically effective contraceptive methods in their health care plans. These are health care plans they pay for through their hard-earned wages as part of their benefit package when they sign on to work for a company.

We know this is a vital component of health care, and it helps women with everything from family planning to

reducing risks of ovarian cancer and other medical conditions. So we want to make sure these recommendations, such as the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which says to include reproductive health care methods as preventive services--we want those services to be offered. As a result of those recommendations, about 675,000 women in Washington State now have robust access to a set of 20 FDA-approved contraceptive methods as part of a preventive services package. These services are covered free of coinsurance, free of copays, and free of deductibles.

Now we are basically saying that because a person is a woman and even though this is an essential part of health care, all of a sudden, because of the Supreme Court decision, a woman might work for an employer who is going to ask her to pay for that instead out of her own pocket.

I think this decision threatens real progress for our health care delivery system. We know this well because in Washington State employers denying women basic health coverage is not a new issue. In fact, women in my State have been fighting for decades.

In 1999 Jennifer Erickson was supervising as a pharmacist at Bartell Drugs in Bellevue, WA. Upon starting her job, she learned that her company didn't cover one prescription that she needed--birth control pills--so she appealed to the company asking them to cover that benefit. She was denied. She went on to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the company's nonunionized employees. In a landmark ruling, the Federal district court--Judge Robert Lasnik--held that Ms. Erickson had the legal right to access birth control under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What is more, the decision was based on a Supreme Court precedent.

Unlike the district court, though, the Supreme Court has gotten this wrong, and the ruling is a dangerous precedent to allow employers to deny other health care benefits just because the owner wants to proclaim that his religious beliefs don't want him to offer those coverages.

As Justice Ginsburg said, would the exemption the Court holds that has been used on contraceptives based on religious grounds--would there be other examples, such as blood transfusions because they are a Jehovah's Witness or antidepressants because they are a Scientologist or medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia and other things, because certain other ethnic groups--Muslims, Jews, or Hindus--said they didn't want to provide those services?

Does it set us up for a lot of medical necessities not being covered by corporations simply because the CEO or many owners of that company decide it is in their religious beliefs not to offer those important services?

It is very important that we vote to make sure we speak on behalf of these women who are writing to us now, that we give them the kind of coverage for health care they deserve and that ensures every employer who sponsors a health care plan has these same benefits included in the package.

The good news is that 60 percent of working women in Washington State get their coverage through their employers. But we need to make sure the employers--just because the CEO all of a sudden has now become the judge of whether they want to cover important health care services, we have to make sure we pass this legislation to protect those employees.

I hope my colleagues will support this legislation.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor. I ask that the time during the quorum call be equally divided between both sides.

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