Healthcare

In this video, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) defends the VA system in a speech on the Senate floor Friday.

Craig criticizes politicians who have vilified the entire VA system for the tragedies that have recently been exposed at Walter Reed.

"I have to say that using anecdotes of horrible unfortunate situations such as the Minneapolis tragedy to castigate an entire system of healthcare and the people that provide that healthcare simply is not fair," Craig said, "It is not justified and, I must say, it stings."

Craig also discusses the Healthcare Empowerment Act, legislation he is introducing that will allow veterans with service related disabilities to go to any hospital or medical clinic of their choice.

Although I have visited service members and their families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center's main hospital, I was unaware of the problems at Walter Reed before the recent news reports.

With the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military medical facilities and personnel support services are under strain to meet the needs of injured service members and their families. Congress has been working to resolve many of the challenges faced by service members in medical hold status, including matters of transitional compensation, medical treatment, evaluation and rating of disabilities, and post separation programs. However, these challenges are long-term and cannot be cured with a one-time fix.

The Pentagon must take urgent action to deal with immediate problems that can be fixed at Walter Reed and other facilities. Over the long term, Congress must also ensure that staffing and maintenance of our military treatment facilities meet high standards that reflect the dignity and respect our wounded warriors and their families have earned.

This week, I plan on introducing legislation to establish an Office of Men’s Health to investigate medical issues unique to men and educate them on ways to improve their health.

The Office would be created within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and would operate similar to the federal Office of Women’s Health.

The Office can play an important role because men are less likely to get a regular physical or seek medical attention for a health issue than women. As a result, men have a shorter life expectancy and more health challenges as they age. That’s why men need to get into the habit of having regular health screenings and visiting the doctor when they’re not feeling perfectly healthy. An Office of Men's Health would serve as a forum for men's health issues and be a central source of information for men across the country. The Office would also allow the federal government to be more proactive in educating men about specific medical issues.

The Personalized Health Information Act is a bipartisan bill that forges a partnership with the private sector to create incentives for doctors and patients to embrace personal health records. The measure will help reduce harmful medical errors and the administrative costs that burden our health care system, and is an important step toward the nationwide adoption of electronic medical records. Unquestionably, enhanced communication between doctors and patients can improve the quality and delivery of health care - patients can become more informed of their personal health care needs and doctors can draw upon a more comprehensive view of patients' health histories to provide better care.

This Women's History Month, we celebrate a landmark in the history of women in the Senate.  In 2007 -- the 110th Congress -- we have a record 16 women serving in the United States Senate.  When I first came to the Senate in 1986, I was the first woman elected in her own right and only the 16th to have ever served.  Now we have 16 all together, all at the same time.  We are making history.

Today, doctors, scientists and the American public know that women and men have different bodies and different health care needs.  Despite these differences, men's health needs have set the standard for our health care research agenda.  That's why I joined Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to introduce the Women's Health Office Act to make women's health offices in major federal agencies permanent. Read more...

It is high time the Pentagon has admitted its mistake and taken action to improve outpatient care at Walter Reed.  The removal of Army Major General George W. Weightman as the commander at Walter Reed is the first step in accepting responsibility for the treatment of our wounded soldiers.

The events reported at Walter Reed were a break in faith with our troops.  We must be able to rely on the chain of command in order to address the serious problems not only at Walter Reed, but at the military facilities across the country.

My concerns are focused on how we serve our troops when they turn from the Pentagon to the VA for their healthcare.  In order for our troops to experience the seamless transition they deserve, the bureaucratic problems that prevent many from getting the care they need must be fixed.

I am committed to preventing similar situations to Walter Reed from striking the VA system.  Clearly, we need an oversight and inspection system that is separate from the agency that is being overseen.

President Bush made a quick tour of Gulf Coast yesterday to check on the status of the region's recovery, eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina struck shores. He probably needed the refresher: the president hadn't set foot in the still-hobbled region in six months, and didn't even mention the Gulf in his January State of the Union address.

But if anyone should be paying attention to the Gulf Coast, it’s the White House and Capitol Hill leadership. Gulf residents know that officials at all levels of government must share blame, but there's a strong sense that Washington is most responsible for the crisis facing the region today.

It was the collapse of ramshackle levees -- built and overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers -- that flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, wiping out thousands of homes, hospitals and schools. It was the botched emergency response, "coordinated" by now-departed FEMA officials in DC, that contributed to the deaths of hundreds trying to flee the storm.

Now, a year and half after Katrina, a failed policy at the highest levels of government is the major reason for the "second tragedy" of Katrina: a stalled recovery that keeps thousands of Gulf residents in limbo, and has left neighborhoods from the Lower Ninth Ward to East Biloxi looking like the storm hit yesterday. Read more...

No two patients are alike and every patient faces unique health challenges. For the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from a rare disease, finding a treatment that works for them can be difficult and, in too many cases, impossible.

First, it’s important to know that “rare diseases Read more...

Aside from the defeat of fascism, World War II left us with two lasting innovations in the civilian sphere: the jeep and employer-provided health coverage. At the time, businesses couldn’t raise wages due to government-enforced wartime salary caps. Health coverage was offered as a means of attracting potential job applicants.

Since then, we have gradually convinced ourselves that an anomaly should be the norm, and politicians have discovered the political benefits of promising to make it so. What was once seen as a fringe benefit is now cast as an employment right. And in California, Maine, and many states in between, lawmakers are trying to sell the idea as at least part of a solution to what is perceived as the crisis of healthcare today.

The worst thing about employer mandates is that they confuse rhetoric with practice. While it is useful to pretend that employers somehow represent a unique class of citizens, the truth is that they are as locked into the state economy as anyone else. The costs that they must bear are at best one degree removed from that which will be borne by all the state’s residents once employers are forced to raise prices, reduce employees' hours or even cut jobs altogether. Read more...

Over the past decade the percentage of low-income American children who are uninsured has dropped by one-third, thanks in large part to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which Congress created in 1997.  And SCHIP, along with its sister program Medicaid, has accomplished this at reasonable cost:  these programs cost less per beneficiary than private insurance, on average.

In his new budget, President Bush proposes to reauthorize SCHIP, which is scheduled to expire this year.  But he fails to give states enough funds simply to maintain their current enrollment — let alone to expand coverage to the millions of low-income children who still lack it.

Under the President’s budget, states would have $7 billion less in federal SCHIP funding over the next five years than they need just to continue insuring as many beneficiaries as they do now.  By 2012, some 46 states would face a total shortfall of $2.9 billion.  That’s equivalent to the cost of covering 1.4 million children. Read more...