Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) who has been asked by Chairman Kennedy to serve as his chief deputy for health reform, submitted the following statement for the record at this morning’s HELP Committee hearing for the nomination of Secretary of Health and Human Services-Designate Tom Daschle:

Thank you Chairman Kennedy. I want to welcome and congratulate a former colleague of mine and of many of the members of this Committee, Senator Tom Daschle, on his nomination to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Having served on this committee for 26 years, I can’t recall another time when the challenges facing the Secretary of HHS were so complex. We have a health care system that is broken— impacting our families, our businesses and our competitiveness as a nation—and a Department of HHS and health agencies in desperate need of leadership. As important, is the critical need to restore the Department to one whose decisions are based on the best available science, not the political ideology of the moment.

Given these challenges, I can think of no better leader to tackle these important challenges than you, Senator Daschle. The knowledge, temperament, passion and expertise you possess will be instrumental in achieving comprehensive health care reform – reform that at long last makes health care accessible and affordable for all Americans.

I also want to take a moment here to recognize how important the leadership of our Chairman, Senator Kennedy, will be in achieving comprehensive health care reform. He has made this the cause of his career and his life. His name is synonymous with national health care reform. I continue to be proud to serve with him and as we embark on this effort, I can think of no one I’d rather have at the helm of this endeavor.

The case for reform of our health care system has never been stronger. Many say Americans have the best health care in the world and for many Americans that may be true. But how effective can that system be if it is unaffordable and inaccessible to millions of Americans? In my state, health care premiums have shot up 42 percent in the last 8 years – in the last two years, nearly 1 in 10 of our people have had no health insurance at all.

And how can we have a world-class health care system if high-quality care and value are inadequate in many parts of the country despite $2 trillion in annual health care spending?

At the same time, our health care system is failing millions of our nation’s children and adolescents. The U.S. is a leader among industrialized nations in infant mortality, affecting African American babies at more than two times the rate as non-Hispanic white babies. That is unacceptable.

Our system is creating a generation of children who may well be the first generation of American children who will live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. That, too, is unacceptable.

This is happening, in part, because our system is driven not by the prevention of illness and disability but the treatment of illness and disability. It’s completely backwards – and it has to change. And with your leadership and the work of this committee, I believe it can and will change.

Over the past year, the full HELP Committee under Chairman Kennedy and the Children and Families Subcommittee, which I chair, have held several hearings examining such public health issues as childhood obesity, disease prevention and health promotion, and the alarming rise of food allergies in children. The work done by this Committee on those issues and many others such as health information technology and health insurance market reforms will be essential to the overall reform effort.

Senator Daschle, I know you recognize that no reform package can be complete without making the necessary improvements to our nation’s public health and prevention system and the health care workforce underpinning that system.

While health care reform is a top priority for me and for this entire committee, I also want to address another vitally important issue and a responsibility of the Department – early childhood education and development. This is an issue that has long been near and dear to my heart. I am encouraged by the commitment President-Elect Obama has made to early childhood education, and I look forward to working on new proposals as well as strengthening current programs like Head Start and CCDBG to benefit our children and their families. An investment in our youngest Americans pays off in their readiness for school, their health, job creation now and in the future, and the need for fewer social services later in a child’s life.

Given the challenges facing this huge - oftentimes disparate - Department, it is my hope that your team will be in place as quickly as possible. I encourage the swift selection of leaders at the FDA, NIH, CDC, and HRSA where action on numerous statutes this Committee has produced in recent years await action – everything from newborn screening to access and availability of pediatric therapeutics to drug safety. And I look forward to working with Chairman Kennedy to help move these nominations as expeditiously as we can.

I believe you will make an outstanding HHS Secretary, Senator Daschle and have no doubt you will serve our country and President-Elect Obama well in this role as you have in every other. And I look forward to working with you, Chairman Kennedy, and my colleagues on the Committee to bring meaningful, lasting change to our nation’s health care system in the months and years to come.

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