Burton hopes GOP will look pretty in pink during health debate

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) hopes that pink will become the new red as Republicans stand up on the Senate floor to express their opposition to healthcare reform.

Burton wrote each GOP senator this past week to encourage them to where pink shorts or ties as they debate healthcare reform, which has included key provisions dealing with breast cancer treatment and awareness — a disease for which pink has been adopted as an awareness signal.

"As the health care debate gets underway on the Senate floor, I respectfully ask you to demonstrate your opposition to health care rationing – and show your solidarity with breast cancer survivors  – by wearing a pink shirt or tie (the universally recognized color of the fight against breast cancer) as you deliberate on this important issue," Burton wrote. "Health care decisions should be made by patients and their doctors not by government accountants."

The Senate voted Thursday morning to adopt an amendment from Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) that would require insurers to cover preventative services to detect breast cancer and other diseases, but rejected an amendment from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) would have prevented committees' recommendations on when breast cancer screenings should take place from becoming law.

Burton lost his wife to complications from breast cancer, and staffers' families have also been touched by battles with breast cancer. Burton is an advocate of breast cancer legislation and foundations.

"Every Democratic version of health care 'reform,' including the bill currently before the Senate, makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that health care insurers will be mandated to provide," Burton said. "These kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common under the national health care system envisioned by our Democrat colleagues as government bureaucrats try to bend the health care cost curve downward."

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