Rosa DeLauro is the Congresswoman from Connecticut’s Third Congressional District, which stretches from the Long Island Sound and New Haven, to the Naugatuck Valley and Waterbury. Rosa serves as the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee and sits on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and she is the Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, where she oversees our nation’s investments in education, health, and employment.
At the core of Rosa’s work is her fight for America’s working families. Rosa believes that we must raise the nation’s minimum wage, give all employees access to paid sick days, allow employees to take paid family and medical leave, and ensure equal pay for equal work. Every day, Rosa fights for legislation that would give all working families an opportunity to succeed.
Rosa is determined to make health care more affordable for all Americans and is a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act. As the senior Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the Department of Health and Human Services, Rosa seeks to ensure strong funding levels for programs that help improve access to quality, affordable health care.
The Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act has helped millions of Americans access more affordable health care, while reducing long-term health care costs. Insurance companies will now be held accountable – it is no longer acceptable to deny care and coverage for pre-existing conditions, impose lifetime coverage limits, or enact excessive premium increases. Recommended preventive care services – things like mammograms, colonoscopies, and cholesterol and diabetes screenings – are covered by insurance with no out-of-pocket costs. These services and the other changes because of the new law have the potential to save lives, and to transform our health care system.
Biomedical Research
A 30-year survivor of ovarian cancer, Rosa is a leading advocate for funding biomedical research, including studies supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She works with colleagues to raise awareness of the need to invest in this work to save lives. This research is also critical to job growth, as every $1 invested in the NIH has been found to result in an additional $2 of business activity. This includes research supported by the NIH, surveillance supported by the CDC, grants that support graduate and professional school education, and numerous other critical programs.
Women’s Health
Rosa worked to reauthorize Johanna’s Law, ensuring women and their health care providers have access to information about gynecologic cancers, enabling earlier detection of these cancers in an effort to save lives. She introduced the Birth Defects Prevention, Risk Reduction, and Awareness Act to ensure that women and their health care providers have information about the potential impacts of medications, chemicals, foodborne illness, and other exposures to themselves and their infants. Rosa also introduced the Breast Density and Mammography Reporting Act which would ensure that women and their health care providers have access to the information about an individuals’ breast density to make informed health care decisions. She also continues to advocate for passage of the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act, a bill that would ensure that decisions about a woman’s hospital stay are made by the woman and her health care provider, not an insurance company.