Jay Inslee: “I want to address the offset of this legislation. I obviously applaud the extension of transitional medical assistance…”

“I want to address the offset of this legislation. I obviously applaud the extension of transitional medical assistance, which provides health insurance for people leaving welfare and going back to work. This is obviously a great thing to do. I believe, however, it is dangerous to allow 435 Members of Congress, most of whom lack medical training, to pick and choose among which illnesses and which treatments should be deemed acceptable under those provisions. There are thousands of physicians across this country that have recognized, for instance, the need for ED medicine, not as a recreational activity but as part of living a normal adult life. We also set up a potentially dangerous precedent by allowing Members to pick and choose individual treatments that they feel do not serve sufficient medicinal purposes. Today, it is a medicine for ED, but should we choose to go down this road, next year we could be having the same debate about mental health treatments or biologics deemed too expensive. This is not the place for these decisions. This is a conversation for doctors to be having with their patients. I find it worrisome we are on the verge of using the doctor's office as a setting for interjecting our preferred social policies where they do not belong. Doctors today prescribe ED medicine because it treats a serious medical disease that can lead to divorce and depression.…”