A Conversation Katie Porter

Well, Like so many Americans,

my family and my friends have faced
mental health challenges.

And so, you know,
I think that there's very few families

and very few workplaces or communities
that can't say that.

And I think one of the things
that I've seen is even as we've made

advances in the ability
to treat mental health,

the actual delivery of that treatment,

the affordability and the accessibility
has often lagged behind.

And so one of the things I've been
really focused on is trying to make sure

that insurers, that providers are actually
delivering on mental health care.

When I moved to Orange County
ten years ago,

there were no pediatric
mental health beds in the entire county.

And as I said, you might think,
well, it's just a county.

Orange County is bigger than like
20 some states,

and yet we had no pediatric
mental health beds.

And so although that's changed
with leadership of our children's

hospital over time, it really goes
to show you how difficult it is

to be able to find mental
health care as well as afford it.

And so when I talk about people
being healthy,

I mean healthy in every
aspect of their lives.

Both physical and mental health.

Well, talking to different people about
their experiences, one of the great

things about being a congressperson is
people share their life stories with you.

They share their frustrations with you.

And I think one of the amazing things
that we've seen the disability community

do, over my lifetime,
as I was born in the era of the ADA.

I grew up in Iowa.

Tom Harkin was my senator,

I can remember what a big deal it
was to have the ADA pass.

As we've seen the stigma reduced and more
and more people feel like

they can talk about their frustrations
and their challenges,

what they could accomplish,
what they couldn't get,

in terms of wellness,
and what they often are falling short on.

And so, you know I started
talking to different people.

I started looking at things,

you know talking to psychiatrists
in our community, psychologists,

social workers, schools, teachers,
and hearing about their challenges.

And so I think that's really part of being
a representative, is that learning part.

Learning what the problems
are in your community

and then teaching other people about them
to create that momentum to fix them.

There are real lessons to be drawn
from the successes of the ADA,

from the successes of the advocacy
of the disability community

and those who support the disability
community have done, which is that

allowing every American,
regardless of their different abilities

to achieve their potential,
is a great thing for our economy.

In fact, when we design inclusive things,
not only do we create opportunity

for people with disabilities
to contribute to our economy,

to contribute their talents
and their passions to our society.

But often designing things
from an inclusive perspective

creates a better outcome for everybody.

And so I heard a lot
about this exact thing

when I chaired my hearing this fall

on the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee on Natural Resources.

I was really interested in the topic
of the accessibility of public lands,

and I mean the

accessibility to a lot of different ways,
including the cost of getting there,

the transportation issues where we locate
these public lands in terms of

environmental justice.

But I also meant very particularly

the accessibility for
the disability community.

And here's what I learned:

Good trail design that helps people

with physical disabilities
is also the right

kind of trail design to prevent erosion
and ensure conservation.

And so in addition to making
these trails more accessible

for people who, for example, may
use wheelchairs, may use different kinds

of walking assistance
or mobility assistance,

you also make those trails easier
for people who use strollers and have kids

or people who are seniors
who may have balance challenges.

And so the result is more people
in our national parks,

more people on our public lands.

And this is good,
both for our souls, for our spirits,

but also for our economy and those rural
communities around the public lands.

So I think it's just a false idea
that sometimes gets pushed out

by corporations, or by the business
community, that accomodating

every American to the extent possible,
is somehow a burden or an expense.

To the contrary,
it is a benefit and it is a privilege

that we are able in our country to welcome
everybody into these institutions and

organizations.
As a

Single mom of three kids, who

is by myself when I have little kids
and trying to navigate,

you know,
a lot of the things that our people may

think of in a strict legal sense
as sort of accommodations

for the disability community,
also make those trails

and those experiences possible for me.

So a great example here is designing
picnic tables

that accommodate wheelchairs.

Those same picnic tables
also accommodate high chairs

and accommodate people
who need different kinds of seating

and different kinds of support
when they sit.

So I think these's a lot of inclusive
design principle

that we ought to be bringing to everything

and recognizing too,
that the disability community

and people with disabilities, it's
not just one kind of disability

and the kinds of technological systems
and what's possible

for people is going to change over time.

So for more inclusive
we can be in those design principles

we're offering going to better be better

at achieving our goals
and set ourselves up for the future,

which I hope will continue
to see more options and possibilities

for people
with disabilities to fully participate.

One of the things we've seen is, for example,
with housing for our military,

my teacher, Senator Warren, was pushing
to make sure that we're building more

military housing, that it can accommodate
people with disabilities.

But if we were to design these houses
with a "visitability" lens,

like you said,
we would build them all that way.

And that means as the population of people
with disabilities goes up and down,

we don't run into these shortages.

and these blockages
because we've designed it

so that it's appropriate for everybody
right from the start.

Orange County, California,
really boomed in sort of the seventies,

and the eighties, and the nineties,
and a lot those folds now are aging.

So, in the district that I represent,

California's 45th District,
we have an aging population.

We're also home to the second largest
retirement community in the United States.

Laguna Woods.

Many of us now at different points
in our life, will benefit from

from different kinds of accommodations.

And so that's why I think about

accommodating disabilities,
not as something that we do

just for people with disabilities,
but it's something we do for all of us.

We all benefit from having people
with disabilities in

and among places, and we also all benefit
from those universal design principles,

often at different points in our lives.

People with disabilities often face
special health care needs,

but what they get from the healthcare
system is distinctly unfair treatment.

And we see this in a lot of different
ways, everything

from denial of organ transplants

to very, very difficult,
arduous arguments about

what is and is not medically necessary
for people with disabilities.

So I've been working across the aisle
to address some of these issues

and I'm really grateful

for the disability community
in helping me understand these challenges

and raise them.

So for example, with my colleague
Jamie Herrera Butler, a representative

Republican from Washington,
we have introduced the Charlotte Woodward

Organ Transplant Discrimination
Prevention Act,

and it would end blatant discrimination
in organ donation

against people with disabilities
which is often based on perceived years

of life, years of quality life in ways
that are really unfair

to people with disabilities.

We've also been working on making sure
that we preserve

the tax deduction
for extraordinary medical expenses.

That is a big issue.

People with disabilities, particularly
if they're facing any kind of surgery

or procedure
to continue to treat disability

throughout their lifetime, making sure
that we preserve that tax deduction.

And then also looking at
what insurers are doing.

And for me, this started with
a real interest in mental health parity,

the promise that insurers

that treat mental health
and physical health the same.

They do not.

They break that promise year after year.

So I passed a bill
to help crack down on insurers,

and that got me interest in how insurers
define medical necessity

and the way that they do this
with regard to things like

wheelchairs, assistive

devices,
prostheses is really, really problematic.

And so it's often very, very biased
against the disability community

and prevents them from being as healthy
as they could be.

I've written to the Biden administration
and asked them to issue better guidance

to insurance companies on what they mean
by medical necessity, and to police insurers more.

We should not be putting it on
patients, on consumers

to be able to go to battle with these huge
insurance companies with big insurance,

that is the job of the government to
fairly enforce the law and to look behind

what may seem like a vacuous definitions
of medical necessity and see how in

real life they are discriminating
against people with disabilities.

Yeah, look, healthy air, clean water,
being able to be healthy in

your environment is something
that's important for all Americans.

But it is particularly important
for people who may be struggling with

lung disease, maybe have more difficult
to treat conditions.

And so I think this is an issue
about equity.

It's an issue of justice.

And we know that certain communities
as well, lower income

communities, communities of color of long
than the repository of pollution.

And so I think it's important that
we begin that transition to green energy,

that we see it as something
that we're doing both for our health,

for our planet,
but also for our economic competitiveness.

So many of our competitor countries,
including China,

are investing much more in green energy
than we are.

And part of the reason they're doing that
is they understand that the economy

that has the manufacturing jobs
for the next century

will be the country that figures out
how to manufacture in a clean way.

And it's the same thing in terms
of thinking about housing shortage,

with is a big issue here in California.

How can we build more housing?

Part of that is thinking about how can we
build housing in a very green way

that minimizes
the harms on the environment, that lets us

put more dense housing
without harming our environment.

I think one of the things that's really,
really important, as an elected official,

is to be honest with the American people.

And that means really pushing
some of these fossil fuel companies,

to push against what we call "greenwashing",
which is, you know, when they

when they say that the're all
about clean energy transition

and yet they continue behind the scenes
to spend

millions and millions of dollars
lobbying against clean energy initiatives.

So I think that's really important,
not just to ask,

do you support clean energy?

You know, do you like polar bears?

Everybody's going to say yes.

But really to say, what action
will you take to put behind your words?

So you know if I had asked
when you think back to the conversation

I had with the CDC director
about free COVID testing,

if I had asked him,
do you think that, you know,

anyone should not get a COVID test
because they're worried about the expense?

He would have said, Oh, of course not.

I think everybody should get a COVID test
who needs one.

But that doesn't mean
that everyone will be able to get one.

And so you really have to push toward
what is the action

that you're going to be able
to connect this to.

So if you're testifying before me
and you're saying that you believe

climate change is real
and you think it's an existential threat,

I need to hear,
the american people need to hear,

the people of this world need to hear,
what are you doing?

What are you doing to reduce emissions?

What you doing to change your business
model?

What are you doing to make a difference?

And it needs to be meaningful and real.

It can't be empty words.