Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), who is a coauthor of this legislation. Ms. DelBENE. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the chair and the ranking member for working with me to include a proposal in this bill that I developed with Congresswoman Black, Congressman Thompson, and Congressman Meehan modernizing Medicare and harnessing the promise of telehealth to improve care for patients nationwide. Allowing patients with end-stage renal disease to receive dialysis at home can dramatically improve their health outcomes and quality of life. This is something I have heard consistently from providers in my home State of Washington, like the Northwest Kidney Centers, who do incredible work to help patients receive dialysis at home when it is medically appropriate. Advances in telehealth hold great potential to extend this treatment option to more Americans, particularly in rural communities, but there are still too many barriers to the use of cutting-edge technologies in Medicare. There is a great need to update our laws to reflect these innovations and reimburse telehealth appropriately; otherwise, we won't just be denying access to healthcare today, we could be preventing the next frontier of innovations from even getting off the ground. Without the long-term visibility of Medicare coverage, startups and entrepreneurs might never get the funding they need to develop new technologies and bring them to market.…”