Thomas Daschle: “today Senator Hollings and I are introducing the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1997. I want to thank Senators…”

“today Senator Hollings and I are introducing the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1997. I want to thank Senators Kennedy, Milulski, Moseley-Braun, Boxer, Feinstein, Levin, Inouye, Murray, Johnson, Bryan, Sarbanes, Ford and Landrieu, for joining us as original cosponsors. We welcome the support of all of our colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, for this important legislation. Our bill is a companion to H.R. 135, which was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives DeLauro, Dingell, and Roukema on January 7, 1997. I bring this bill to the Senate both to put an end to the relatively new practice of forcing women to have mastectomies on an outpatient basis and to begin a discussion on how to develop and maintain policies that protect patients and ensure continued access to affordable high quality medical care. Every 3 minutes another woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. This year alone, more than 180,000 women will find out they have breast cancer. This disease strikes at the core of American families, taking our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters on an often terrifying tour of our health care system. The Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act seeks to make the journey less worrisome by requiring insurance companies to provide at least a minimum amount of inpatient hospital care for patients undergoing mastectomies or lymph node dissections for the treatment of breast cancer.”