Louisiana Senator David Vitter, the first significant Republican crack in the wall against a disastrous health-care bill, is discussed below. Vitter didn’t just vote for the Mikulski amendment. He offered his own because he didn’t think the Mikulski amendment was specific enough. This was wrong in so many ways (see below), and I say this as a true believer in mammograms before the age of 40. But reporting from New Orleans gives the distinct impression that Vitter, who has had problems with women, was using this very serious health-care bill to do a little grandstanding:
[Vitter] described the issue in very personal terms, noting that his wife, Wendy, lost her mother, Bea Baldwin, to breast cancer in 1967. Baldwin was 39 and her daughter was only 6.
After the task force recommendation, Vitter said he and his wife had a roundtable discussion with breast cancer survivors, medical experts and others concerned about the disease.
The irony is that, with or without the Mikulski (or the Vitter) interventions, this health-care bill will be disastrous for women. The U.S. has the best cancer treatments on earth. This bill would utterly destroy it. So, Senator Vitter, quit grandstanding and get to work helping women!