Carrie Meek: “as the song goes: ``I'm every woman,'' and I rise to offer my support for the health care provisions for women and…”

“as the song goes: ``I'm every woman,'' and I rise to offer my support for the health care provisions for women and children that Chairman Pat Williams has incorporated in the health care reform bill being drafted by his Education and Labor Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations. If the distinctive health care needs of women and children are neglected in health care reform, how can we dare call it universal? Without correcting the longstanding failure to recognize the health needs that are characteristic of women and those which are characteristic of children, how can we possibly call this legislation reform? The benefits added in committee by Chairman Williams are essentially preventive or rehabilitative in nature. Preventive medicine has been called by all of us as the cost-effective approach to health care reform. It is also the most compassionate. It avoids a future of unnecessary suffering. For women, it provides, among other services, reproductive health care and regular checkups for cancer. For children with chronic and congenital conditions, it provides for rehabilitation services. Only by oversight, not by design, was this latter benefit left out of the administration's proposal. Only through inexplicable callousness could we fail to incorporate it in our final proposal to the President. Madam Speaker, these are good proposals, seeking good outcomes, both in terms of fiscal responsibility and in the quality of life.…”