Political Quotes

“Today, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3548, the Improving Trauma Care Act of 2014, bipartisan legislation I am proud to have sponsored with the support and counsel of the Energy and Commerce Committee. I commend the committee staff for their hard work to move this legislation forward through markup at the subcommittee and full committee levels and to steer it to the House floor today. This simple but important bill seeks to refine inconsistent definitions of what constitutes ``trauma'' as outlined in the United States Code. Common sense would certainly point to many burn injuries as a type of trauma, but the U.S. Code doesn't recognizes them as such. The failure to incorporate the full range of traumatic injuries in the description of ``trauma,'' including burns, can result in gaps in coverage and in provisions of care throughout the care system. By modernizing this term as federally defined, Congress can ensure that it accurately reflects the medical realities of trauma and protects access to the provision of trauma care. There are important gains to be made in the field of traumatic medicine by the further integration of care and by finding synergies between burn and trauma centers. This has been all too evident in efforts to save lives after national tragedies, such as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. The importance of strengthening our Nation's burn care infrastructure can't be stressed enough. Inadequacy and inconsistency in the U.S.…”