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Floor Speech
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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I rise to support Senator Mullin's legislation, the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act.
Mr. President, I am a doctor, and people become desperate because of their illness, and they want just one more chance for themselves, their child, whomever.
The folks who are most desperate are the parents for their child, and we all know that, because if someone dies when they are 70, it can be tragic, but they have lived 70 good years, and when someone dies when she is 6, she is denied 76 more years. It is the desperation of these families that kind of cries out for this piece of legislation. They want this passed.
The goal of this legislation is to get cures for pediatric cancer to the patient more quickly.
Now, we have been working on this for several years--Democrats and Republicans--trying to make it so that those families, their desperate pleas are actually heard. And just as the Senator from Oklahoma noted, the legislation was recently renamed to the honorable legacy of Mikaela Naylon, who spent her final days advocating for better pediatric drug research.
The irony here is that the objection is going to come out of a genuine concern that people achieve healthcare, a concern I share for increased funding, for funding to be extended for community health centers. I share that concern.
But there is no one way to treat the ills, literally the ills of the United States of America. And to think that we can do it all at once, it is just not true.
But also to say that you are not going to give a chance for children to have a cure for cancer if you don't get what you want, is just not true. It is selfish. It is tragic. These parents are desperate for this act.
Now, this will expand the research and drug development for these pediatric illnesses, and I commit as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that I will work to pass community health center legislation. I will work to have it well funded. I will not let it sit on the back burner never getting done. There is a commitment from the chairman to work with my Democratic colleague to get it passed this year. If that is the only barrier between offering these children hope, I ask that that not be a barrier.
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