Senate Proceeding on Aug 2nd, 2007 :: 4:33:46 to 4:38:00
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4:33:39 to 4:33:52( Edit History Discussion )

former surgeon of the united states, said there's no medical care without dental care. there's lincoln between plak and heart disease. >> now know that gum disease can be a signal of diabetes or liver

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imbalance or hormone imbalance. so we've got to do better. we've got to do better than we're doing today. dental disease is the most common childhood ailment in the united states today. one out of

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five children between the ages of 2-4 will have some form of decaying teeth. and by the time you reach 15, three out of five will have tooth decay. and there's an imbalance as far as the racial effects.

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racial minorities are much more likely to sustain untreated tooth decay. 40% of african-american children have untreated tooth decay. i want to thank my colleague, senator bingaman, for his leadership

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on these issues, introducing legislation and moving forward on trying to provide better oral health care for our children. i want to thank senator snowe for her leadership. and i want to thank senator baucus

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and senator grassley for including initiatives in the legislation that's before us that will help the states meet this challenge. $200 million is included in the bill. and i thank you for that,

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because that's going to have a major impact to try to help american families. we have an important opportunity for us -- before us in the legislation that we are considering to help our children children.

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not only continue the benefits for. million children but so that we can add another three million of the nine million who currently have no health insurance. mr. president, i can tell you, i think

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we've got to do more than this. this is our opportunity today. we've got to take advantage of it. our health care system is in crisis. earlier this week, i introduced the universal health coverage act.

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that would require everyone in this country to have health insurance. i think it's absolutely essential that we address the major problems in our country of so many people being without health insurance.

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but let us start with our children and we can do that with the legislation that's before us. why is that important? well, we know that children who are enrolled in the children's health care program or have insurance

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are much more likely to get primary health care. they won't use the emergency rooms as much. if you don't have insurance, you have no choice but to go to the emergency room. we have improved the

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outcome -- the health care outcomes if a child has health insurance. and we know they're much more likely to have immunization and primary health care. i want to just comment. again, these are -- talk about

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families, talk about individuals individuals. the senate finance committee held a hearing on the children's health care program. the bedford family from my o state, baltimore, from my own city,

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baltimore, came down here and testified. mrs. bedford said, "we no longer have to decide whether a child is really sick enough to warrant a doctor's visit." the bedford family enrolled in the children's

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health care program in the state of maryland. the program is working. the program is working. without this legislation, we'll have to reimpose freezes on enrollments and people will lose coverage. it

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happened in my own state. this is a bipartisan bill and i really do compliment my colleagues for bringing forward a bipartisan bill that we can get enacted into law. in maryland, we started a program

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on july 1, 1998, so we're between our ninth and tenth year. we started with 38,000 children enrolled. we're now up to 101,000 children enrolled in this program w. this bill, maryland -- program. with

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this bill, maryland will get an increase in funds from $67 million to $189 million. we'll be able to enroll 42,000 more children in the state of maryland. these -- this is important. this is an important