Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to be making a unanimous consent request. I am going to wait for Senator Grassley to be on the floor. Let me just, if I might, explain what the unanimous consent will be. It deals with H.R. 766. I am a proud sponsor of the Preventive Health Savings Act since the 113th Congress as it stands. The Congressional Budget Office scores budgetary implications of preventive health legislation in a 10-year timeframe, limiting Congress's ability to understand the long-term impacts of meaningful prevention policies. This bicameral, bipartisan legislation would direct CBO to more accurately reflect the long-term cost saving potential of preventive healthcare initiatives and encourage the use of data-informed preventive health measures. On March 19 of this year, the House of Representatives passed this legislation by voice vote. Now, here is the challenge we have. This legislation will allow us to implement preventive healthcare sooner. That will save lives and will save dollars. To just give you one example, we now have a multicancer blood screening test that could be implemented for certain targeted populations. The longer that is delayed--and being reimbursable under our healthcare system--the more people are not going to have the advantage of that, and more lives are going to be lost. And later detection of cancer, we know, is a more costly type of care that is needed, and it costs more money.…”