1 00:00:10,947 --> 00:00:12,812 Well, like so many Americans, 2 00:00:12,812 --> 00:00:17,050 my family and my friends have faced mental health challenges. 3 00:00:17,350 --> 00:00:19,986 And so, you know, I think that there's very few families 4 00:00:19,986 --> 00:00:23,326 and very few workplaces or communities that can't say that. 5 00:00:23,723 --> 00:00:27,060 And I think one of the things that I've seen is even as we've made 6 00:00:27,460 --> 00:00:30,393 advances in the ability to treat mental health, 7 00:00:30,927 --> 00:00:33,400 the actual delivery of that treatment, 8 00:00:33,600 --> 00:00:37,871 the affordability and the accessibility has often lagged behind. 9 00:00:37,904 --> 00:00:42,075 And so one of the things I've been really focused on is trying to make sure 10 00:00:42,242 --> 00:00:47,367 that insurers, that providers are actually delivering on mental health care. 11 00:00:47,367 --> 00:00:49,783 When I moved to Orange County ten years ago, 12 00:00:50,316 --> 00:00:55,422 there were no pediatric mental health beds in the entire county. 13 00:00:55,719 --> 00:00:58,541 And as I said, you might think, well, it's just a county. 14 00:00:58,658 --> 00:01:02,162 Orange County is bigger than like 20 some states. 15 00:01:02,495 --> 00:01:05,265 And yet we had no pediatric mental health beds. 16 00:01:05,335 --> 00:01:08,568 And so although that's changed with the leadership of our children's 17 00:01:08,568 --> 00:01:12,872 hospital over time, it really goes to show you how difficult it is 18 00:01:13,506 --> 00:01:17,077 to be able to find mental health care as well as afford it. 19 00:01:17,310 --> 00:01:19,813 And so when I talk about people being healthy, 20 00:01:20,013 --> 00:01:22,682 I mean healthy in every aspect of their lives. 21 00:01:22,949 --> 00:01:25,318 Both physical and mental health. 22 00:01:31,662 --> 00:01:35,228 Well, talking to different people about their experiences, one of the great 23 00:01:35,228 --> 00:01:39,132 things about being a congressperson is people share their life stories with you. 24 00:01:39,165 --> 00:01:41,034 They share their frustrations with you. 25 00:01:41,034 --> 00:01:45,105 And I think one of the amazing things that we've seen the disability community 26 00:01:45,105 --> 00:01:49,609 do over my lifetime, as I was born in the era of the ADA. 27 00:01:49,742 --> 00:01:50,977 I grew up in Iowa. 28 00:01:50,977 --> 00:01:52,545 Tom Harkin was my senator 29 00:01:52,545 --> 00:01:56,416 and I can remember what it was a big deal it was to have the ADA pass. 30 00:01:56,416 --> 00:02:00,320 As we've seen the stigma reduced and more and more people feel like 31 00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:03,356 they can talk about their frustrations and their challenges, 32 00:02:03,990 --> 00:02:06,392 what they could accomplish, what they couldn't 33 00:02:06,392 --> 00:02:10,130 get in terms of wellness and what they often are falling short on. 34 00:02:10,130 --> 00:02:12,565 And so I started talking to different people. 35 00:02:12,565 --> 00:02:14,447 I started looking at things. 36 00:02:14,447 --> 00:02:17,871 You know talking to psychiatrists in our community, psychologists, social 37 00:02:17,871 --> 00:02:21,875 workers, schools, teachers, and hearing about their challenges. 38 00:02:21,875 --> 00:02:25,805 And so I think that's really part of being a representative, is that learning part. 39 00:02:25,812 --> 00:02:28,081 Learning what the problems are in your community 40 00:02:28,248 --> 00:02:32,452 and then teaching other people about them to create that momentum to fix them. 41 00:02:38,925 --> 00:02:43,129 There are real lessons to be drawn from the successes of the ADA, 42 00:02:43,163 --> 00:02:47,340 from the successes of the advocacy of the disability community 43 00:02:47,340 --> 00:02:50,670 and those who support the disability community have done, which is that 44 00:02:50,670 --> 00:02:55,942 allowing every American, regardless of their different abilities 45 00:02:55,942 --> 00:03:00,513 to achieve their potential, is a great thing for our economy. 46 00:03:00,547 --> 00:03:05,852 In fact, when we design inclusive things, not only do we create opportunity 47 00:03:05,852 --> 00:03:09,189 for people with disabilities to contribute to our economy, 48 00:03:09,189 --> 00:03:13,159 to contribute their talents and their passions to our society. 49 00:03:13,159 --> 00:03:17,163 But often designing things from an inclusive perspective 50 00:03:17,397 --> 00:03:20,333 creates a better outcome for everybody. 51 00:03:20,433 --> 00:03:22,902 And so I heard a lot about this exact thing 52 00:03:23,336 --> 00:03:25,505 when I chaired my hearing this fall 53 00:03:25,939 --> 00:03:30,076 on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Natural Resources. 54 00:03:30,310 --> 00:03:34,380 I was really interested in the topic of the accessibility of public lands, 55 00:03:34,847 --> 00:03:35,715 and I mean the 56 00:03:35,715 --> 00:03:39,452 accessibility to a lot of different ways, including the cost of getting there, 57 00:03:39,619 --> 00:03:43,890 the transportation issues where we locate these public lands in terms of 58 00:03:44,891 --> 00:03:46,025 environmental justice. 59 00:03:46,025 --> 00:03:47,894 But I also meant very particularly 60 00:03:47,894 --> 00:03:50,156 the accessibility for the disability community. 61 00:03:50,330 --> 00:03:51,931 And here's what I learned. 62 00:03:51,931 --> 00:03:55,235 Good trail design that helps people 63 00:03:55,235 --> 00:03:59,038 with physical disabilities is also the right 64 00:03:59,038 --> 00:04:03,443 kind of trail design to prevent erosion and ensure conservation. 65 00:04:03,843 --> 00:04:07,213 And so in addition to making these trails more accessible 66 00:04:07,213 --> 00:04:10,783 for people who, for example, may use wheelchairs, may use different kinds 67 00:04:10,783 --> 00:04:13,019 of walking assistance or mobility assistance, 68 00:04:13,219 --> 00:04:17,090 you also make those trails easier for people who use strollers and have kids 69 00:04:17,290 --> 00:04:20,193 or people who are seniors who may have balance challenges. 70 00:04:20,627 --> 00:04:24,030 And so the result is more people in our national parks, 71 00:04:24,030 --> 00:04:25,832 more people on our public lands. 72 00:04:25,832 --> 00:04:28,935 And that is good both for our souls, for our spirits, 73 00:04:29,102 --> 00:04:32,739 but also for our economy and those rural communities around the public lands. 74 00:04:32,739 --> 00:04:36,609 So I think it's just a false idea that sometimes gets pushed out 75 00:04:37,143 --> 00:04:41,748 by corporations or by the business community that accomodating 76 00:04:41,748 --> 00:04:46,753 every American to the extent possible, is somehow a burden or an expense. 77 00:04:46,753 --> 00:04:50,823 To the contrary, it is a benefit and it is a privilege 78 00:04:50,823 --> 00:04:54,627 that we are able in our country to welcome everybody into these institutions and 79 00:04:54,627 --> 00:04:56,095 organizations. As a mom, 80 00:04:57,764 --> 00:04:59,866 single mom of three kids who 81 00:04:59,866 --> 00:05:03,403 is by myself when I have little kids and trying to navigate, 82 00:05:04,037 --> 00:05:07,140 you know, a lot of the things that our people may 83 00:05:07,640 --> 00:05:10,843 think of in a strict legal sense as sort of accommodations 84 00:05:11,077 --> 00:05:14,047 for the disability community also maybe those trails 85 00:05:14,047 --> 00:05:15,922 and those experiences possible for me. 86 00:05:15,922 --> 00:05:20,219 So a great example here is designing picnic tables 87 00:05:20,553 --> 00:05:22,522 that accommodate wheelchairs. 88 00:05:22,522 --> 00:05:25,692 Those same picnic tables also accommodate high chairs 89 00:05:26,002 --> 00:05:28,728 and accommodate people who need different kinds of seating 90 00:05:28,728 --> 00:05:30,850 and different kinds of support when they sit. 91 00:05:30,850 --> 00:05:34,701 So I think there's a lot of inclusive design principle 92 00:05:34,934 --> 00:05:37,470 that we ought to be bringing to everything 93 00:05:38,237 --> 00:05:41,374 and recognizing too, that the disability community 94 00:05:41,774 --> 00:05:44,911 and people with disabilities, it's not just one kind of disability 95 00:05:45,478 --> 00:05:48,448 and the kinds of technological systems and what's possible 96 00:05:48,501 --> 00:05:50,416 for people is going to change over time. 97 00:05:50,416 --> 00:05:54,554 So the more inclusive we can be in those design principles 98 00:05:54,554 --> 00:05:56,522 we're offering going to better be better 99 00:05:56,522 --> 00:05:59,826 at achieving our goals and set ourselves up for the future, 100 00:05:59,826 --> 00:06:03,326 which I hope will continue to see more options and more possibilities 101 00:06:03,429 --> 00:06:05,765 for people with disabilities to fully participate. 102 00:06:12,405 --> 00:06:16,605 One of the things we've seen is, for example, with housing for our military, 103 00:06:16,609 --> 00:06:20,747 my teacher, Senator Warren, was pushing to make sure that we're building more 104 00:06:20,747 --> 00:06:24,384 military housing, that it can accommodate people with disabilities. 105 00:06:24,684 --> 00:06:28,821 But if we were designing these houses with a visitability 106 00:06:28,821 --> 00:06:31,791 lens, like you said, we would build them all that way. 107 00:06:31,824 --> 00:06:35,928 And that means as the population of people with disabilities goes up and down, 108 00:06:35,928 --> 00:06:37,597 we don't run into these shortages 109 00:06:37,597 --> 00:06:39,722 and these blockages because we've designed it 110 00:06:39,722 --> 00:06:42,551 so that it's appropriate for everybody right from the start. 111 00:06:42,551 --> 00:06:46,259 Orange County, California, really boomed in sort of the seventies 112 00:06:46,259 --> 00:06:49,742 and the eighties and the nineties, and a lot of those folks now are aging. 113 00:06:49,742 --> 00:06:51,644 So in the district that I represent, 114 00:06:51,644 --> 00:06:54,914 California's 45th District, we have an aging population. 115 00:06:55,081 --> 00:06:59,819 We're also home to the second largest retirement community in the United States. 116 00:06:59,819 --> 00:07:00,987 Laguna Woods. 117 00:07:00,987 --> 00:07:04,657 Many of us now at different points in our life, will benefit from 118 00:07:04,657 --> 00:07:07,059 from different kinds of accommodations. 119 00:07:07,059 --> 00:07:09,262 And so that's why I think about 120 00:07:09,662 --> 00:07:12,732 accommodating disabilities, not as something that we do 121 00:07:13,373 --> 00:07:16,869 just for people with disabilities, but it's something we do for all of us. 122 00:07:16,869 --> 00:07:19,872 We all benefit from having people with disabilities in 123 00:07:19,972 --> 00:07:24,076 and among places, and we also all benefit from those universal design principles, 124 00:07:24,277 --> 00:07:26,846 often at different points in our lives. 125 00:07:33,586 --> 00:07:37,523 People with disabilities often face special health care needs, 126 00:07:37,523 --> 00:07:43,262 but what they get on the health care system is distinctly unfair treatment. 127 00:07:43,262 --> 00:07:45,932 And we see this in a lot of different ways, everything 128 00:07:45,932 --> 00:07:49,235 from denial of organ transplants 129 00:07:49,936 --> 00:07:53,706 to very, very difficult, arduous arguments about 130 00:07:53,973 --> 00:07:57,880 what is and is not medically necessary for people with disabilities. 131 00:07:57,880 --> 00:08:01,113 So I've been working across the aisle to address some of these issues 132 00:08:01,113 --> 00:08:02,415 and I'm really grateful 133 00:08:02,415 --> 00:08:05,918 for the disability community in helping me understand these challenges 134 00:08:05,918 --> 00:08:06,919 and raise them. 135 00:08:06,919 --> 00:08:10,490 So for example, with my colleague Jamie Herrera Butler, a representative 136 00:08:10,990 --> 00:08:14,594 Republican from Washington, we have introduced the Charlotte Woodward 137 00:08:14,594 --> 00:08:18,531 Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act, 138 00:08:18,531 --> 00:08:22,535 and it would end blatant discrimination in organ donation 139 00:08:22,535 --> 00:08:26,672 against people with disabilities, which is often based on perceived years 140 00:08:26,672 --> 00:08:30,710 of life, years of quality life in ways that are really unfair 141 00:08:31,210 --> 00:08:33,246 to people with disabilities. 142 00:08:33,246 --> 00:08:36,616 We've also been working on making sure that we preserve 143 00:08:36,816 --> 00:08:40,253 the tax deduction for extraordinary medical expenses. 144 00:08:40,853 --> 00:08:42,215 That is a big issue. 145 00:08:42,215 --> 00:08:45,825 People with disabilities, particularly if they're facing any kind of surgery 146 00:08:45,825 --> 00:08:49,795 or procedure to continue to treat their disability 147 00:08:49,795 --> 00:08:53,900 throughout their lifetime, making sure that we preserve that tax deduction. 148 00:08:54,667 --> 00:08:57,670 And then also looking at what insurers are doing. 149 00:08:57,670 --> 00:09:01,140 And for me, this started with a real interest in mental health parity, 150 00:09:01,574 --> 00:09:02,808 the promise that insurers 151 00:09:02,808 --> 00:09:05,611 that treat mental health and physical health the same. 152 00:09:05,878 --> 00:09:06,746 They do not. 153 00:09:06,746 --> 00:09:09,181 They break that promise year after year. 154 00:09:09,482 --> 00:09:12,718 So I passed a bill to help crack down on insurers, 155 00:09:12,718 --> 00:09:18,090 and that got me interested in how insurers define medical necessity 156 00:09:18,658 --> 00:09:21,427 and the way that they do this with regard to things like 157 00:09:22,929 --> 00:09:24,297 wheelchairs, assistive 158 00:09:24,297 --> 00:09:27,900 devices, prostheses is really, really problematic. 159 00:09:27,900 --> 00:09:31,691 And so it's often very, very biased against the disability community 160 00:09:31,691 --> 00:09:34,400 and prevents them from being as healthy as they could be. 161 00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:39,345 I've written to the Biden administration and asked them to issue better guidance 162 00:09:39,679 --> 00:09:44,951 to insurance companies on what they mean by medical necessity to police insurers. 163 00:09:44,951 --> 00:09:49,922 What we should not be putting it on patients and consumers 164 00:09:51,090 --> 00:09:55,361 to be able to go to battle with these huge insurance companies with big insurance 165 00:09:55,561 --> 00:10:00,333 that is the job of the government to fairly enforce the law and to look behind 166 00:10:00,866 --> 00:10:05,371 what may seem like a vacuous definitions of medical necessity and see how in 167 00:10:05,371 --> 00:10:09,508 real life they are discriminating against people with disabilities. 168 00:10:16,248 --> 00:10:21,053 Yeah, look, healthy air, clean water, being able to be healthy in 169 00:10:21,053 --> 00:10:24,156 your environment is something that's important for all Americans. 170 00:10:24,690 --> 00:10:28,027 But it is particularly important for people who may be struggling with 171 00:10:28,027 --> 00:10:31,931 lung disease, maybe have more difficult to treat conditions. 172 00:10:31,931 --> 00:10:34,700 And so I think this is an issue about equity. 173 00:10:34,700 --> 00:10:36,902 It's an issue of justice. 174 00:10:36,902 --> 00:10:39,639 And we know that certain communities as well, lower income 175 00:10:39,639 --> 00:10:44,176 communities, communities of color of long than the repository of pollution. 176 00:10:45,111 --> 00:10:48,948 And so I think it's important that we begin that transition to green energy, 177 00:10:49,148 --> 00:10:52,284 that we see it as something that we're doing both for our health, 178 00:10:52,885 --> 00:10:57,023 for our planet, but also for our economic competitiveness. 179 00:10:57,590 --> 00:11:00,226 So many of our competitor countries, including China, 180 00:11:00,226 --> 00:11:02,995 are investing much more in green energy than we are. 181 00:11:03,229 --> 00:11:06,999 And part of the reason they're doing that is they understand that the economy 182 00:11:07,199 --> 00:11:10,836 that has the manufacturing jobs for the next century 183 00:11:11,037 --> 00:11:14,607 will be the country that figures out how to manufacture in a clean way. 184 00:11:14,887 --> 00:11:18,124 And it's the same thing in terms of thinking about housing shortage, 185 00:11:18,644 --> 00:11:20,813 which is a big issue here in California. 186 00:11:20,813 --> 00:11:22,515 How can we build more housing? 187 00:11:22,515 --> 00:11:26,185 Part of that is thinking about how can we build housing in a very green way 188 00:11:26,419 --> 00:11:30,056 that minimizes the harms on the environment, that lets us 189 00:11:30,056 --> 00:11:33,192 put more dense housing without harming our environment. 190 00:11:33,659 --> 00:11:38,097 I think one of the things that's really, really important as an elected official 191 00:11:38,330 --> 00:11:41,200 is to be honest with the American people. 192 00:11:41,767 --> 00:11:45,304 And that means really pushing some of these fossil fuel companies- 193 00:11:46,105 --> 00:11:50,509 to push against what we call greenwashing, which is, you know, when they 194 00:11:50,509 --> 00:11:53,646 when they say that they're all about clean energy transition 195 00:11:53,879 --> 00:11:57,283 and yet they continue behind the scenes to spend 196 00:11:58,050 --> 00:12:02,221 millions and millions of dollars lobbying against clean energy initiatives. 197 00:12:02,521 --> 00:12:05,224 So I think that's really important, not just to ask, 198 00:12:05,624 --> 00:12:07,426 do you support clean energy? 199 00:12:07,426 --> 00:12:09,428 You know, do you like polar bears? 200 00:12:09,428 --> 00:12:11,330 Everybody's going to say yes. 201 00:12:11,330 --> 00:12:16,435 But really to say, what action will you take to put behind your words? 202 00:12:16,469 --> 00:12:19,939 So you know if I had asked when you think back to the conversation 203 00:12:19,939 --> 00:12:23,342 I had with the CDC director about free COVID testing, 204 00:12:23,843 --> 00:12:27,079 if I had asked him, do you think that, you know, 205 00:12:27,113 --> 00:12:31,350 anyone should not get a COVID test because they're worried about the expense? 206 00:12:31,717 --> 00:12:33,552 He would have said, Oh, of course not. 207 00:12:33,552 --> 00:12:36,555 I think everybody should get a COVID test who needs one. 208 00:12:37,123 --> 00:12:40,826 But that doesn't mean that everyone will be able to get one. 209 00:12:41,026 --> 00:12:44,023 And so you really have to push toward what is the action 210 00:12:44,023 --> 00:12:46,265 that you're going to be able to connect this to. 211 00:12:46,265 --> 00:12:50,703 So if you're testifying before me and you're saying that you believe 212 00:12:50,703 --> 00:12:53,873 climate change is real and you think it's an existential threat, 213 00:12:54,306 --> 00:12:57,176 I need to hear, the American people need to hear, 214 00:12:57,176 --> 00:13:00,579 the people of this world need to hear, what are you doing? 215 00:13:00,846 --> 00:13:02,782 What are you doing to reduce emissions? 216 00:13:02,782 --> 00:13:05,090 What are you doing to change your business model? 217 00:13:05,090 --> 00:13:07,052 What are you doing to make a difference? 218 00:13:07,052 --> 00:13:08,921 And it needs to be meaningful and real. 219 00:13:08,921 --> 00:13:10,689 It can't be empty words.