Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I think it is important to point out that it is not just healthcare providers that work in VA healthcare facilities. Maintenance workers work in VA healthcare facilities and interact with patients and they move back and forth throughout the facility. Cafeteria workers, other people who are not healthcare professionals work in VA facilities in and around the most sensitive patients being provided with care in the most intense healthcare environments. They can infect people with COVID. They can infect healthcare providers who work at the VA who interact with patients even more closely, and they can infect patients directly. It is a responsible policy to ensure that where there is a severely ill patient or someone who is extremely vulnerable and has their immunity lowered--as a breast cancer survivor, I can tell you that when you go through chemotherapy, which I did not, but I have obviously spent a lot of time on understanding what breast cancer patients and people who go through chemotherapy experience, your immunity is knocked out. So we are going to prohibit people who work in VA healthcare facilities from wearing masks to ensure that someone who has had their immunity system knocked out from being protected from an individual who might have COVID, while they are at work? That is grossly irresponsible, and it would result, potentially, in people getting sick and dying from something other than what they are being treated for at the VA.…”