Max Baucus: “I wish to read a quote from the Chicago Tribune, dated September 14, by Judith Graham, Tribune staff reporter commenting…”

“I wish to read a quote from the Chicago Tribune, dated September 14, by Judith Graham, Tribune staff reporter commenting on the conditions of people needing medical care and needing it desperately on the heels of Katrina: A New Orleans man with a brain tumor needed surgery fast-- but when he found himself stranded without health insurance in Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina, it took the intervention of Ruth Kennedy, Louisiana's deputy Medicaid director, to get him help. Yet this energetic state official can't possibly pull strings for all of the people who need medical assistance after the storm, such as an 89-year-old Louisiana man, now in Los Angeles with family, who couldn't fill his prescriptions because his Louisiana Medicaid card isn't good in California. Or a displaced New Orleans woman with colon cancer who needed chemotherapy but couldn't get an appointment in the city she had fled to after the storm. Meeting the medical needs of up to 1 million hurricane evacuees scattered across the country looms as an enormous challenge. Most of them are without their medical records or any way to contact their physicians; many are suddenly without jobs and at risk of losing their medical coverage; and as a group, they're disproportionately likely to be needy and sicker-than-average. Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and I have written a bill. We would like the swift passage of that bill. It is the Emergency Health Care Relief Act.…”