Political Quotes

“while I applaud what this budget bill does for education and the environment. I am appalled at what the appropriators have done to destroy the organ transplant allocation policy. This is a matter of life and death, and as one who believes in the sanctity of life I cannot believe that the appropriators would knowingly kill an effort that would save people's lives. What I am talking about is that deep within this bill is a legislative rider that will sentence people to a death that could be avoided. I am talking about the rider that would stop the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing their regulation to make our organ allocation system more fair so more people can live. The current organ allocation system is patently unfair because it gives higher priority to geography over the health of the patient. To illustrate this, let me point out the attached article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune about Jordan Rosebar, a little girl from Washington, DC. A little girl who died needlessly waiting for a liver and an intestine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Jordan was only on the UPMC list because UPMC is one of the only centers in the country capable of doing the procedure she needed. What is especially sad about her story is that even though she was by far the sickest patient in the Eastern half of the United States, instead of going to her, the organs she needed went to a healthier patient on a list in Atlanta.”