Ranking Member Cassidy Delivers Remarks During Hearing on Underrepresentation of Minority Doctors, Maternal Mortality

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, delivered remarks during today’s hearing to address the underrepresentation of minority doctors and maternal mortality in the United States.

Click here to watch the hearing live. 

Cassidy’s speech as prepared for delivery can be found below:

Thank you, Chair Sanders.

This Committee has covered the shortages of physicians and other health workers extensively. Shortages which hurt the delivery of health care in all communities. My home state of Louisiana is projected to have the third worst shortage of physicians of any state by 2030.

We need more doctors, especially in underserved areas lacking sufficient health care resources. My practice as a physician was for 25 years in a hospital serving the uninsured and the poorly insured. So this is something which I have spent my professional life attempting to address.

Today we are going to look specifically at minority doctors and health professionals underrepresented in our health care system. For example, Black doctors only account for 8 percent of all physicians despite comprising 13.6 percent of the U.S. population. There is a greater disparity among Hispanic or Latino doctors, who account for 7.2 percent of all physicians despite being 19.1 percent of the population.

Interesting to note that this disparity is not felt across all minorities. Asian doctors account for 22.2 percent of all physicians while making up only 6.3 percent of the population. This is important nuance as we consider the issue.

It is also important to note that we have a limited number of GME residency slots to train new doctors. And these residency slots are not allocated or dispersed to reflect where underserved communities are. Unfortunately, this topic is under the Finance jurisdiction, but is important context and needs to be considered in any conversation about addressing any health care workforce shortage.

But, access to opportunity is crucial. Want to highlight Xavier University, an HBCU in my state of Louisiana, which this week announced a signed agreement with Ochsner Health to open a medical school in New Orleans. Many of the doctors trained at Xavier will serve the underserved in my state and elsewhere. I am so proud of Xavier and look forward to continuing to support their efforts.

As a physician, I also wish to support nurses who climbed the career ladder by building their credentials over time through upskilling. Aside from benefiting the individual, it also increases the capabilities of our health care workforce. Our witness, Dr. Jaines Andrades will tell us how she has done this in her career.

We should also look into other challenges to ensure our health care system meets the needs of all patients, especially the underserved. Making sure patients from all walks of life can participate in clinical trials and receive high-quality medical treatment is essential. One of our witnesses today, Dr. Brian Stone, will tell us how he is trying to address these issues in his community.

The Committee is also discussing maternal mortality, a topic that is incredibly important to me as a doctor and has been a priority of mine in Congress. It is important to acknowledge that this issue disproportionately impacts Black women.

As a doctor who worked in Louisiana’s charity hospital system for 25 years, I know these communities are at highest risk.

That is why I am pleased to have U.S. Representative and Dr. Michael Burgess testifying before this committee. As an OBGYN, he stayed up many nights providing medical care to pregnant moms and their babies in underserved populations. Now as a legislator, Dr. Burgess is a leader in addressing racial disparities in health care. It has been an honor to work with him on legislation specifically tackling maternal mortality.

We were unaware we were having a Members of Congress panel until Sunday, so we greatly appreciate him joining us on such short notice. His participation helps make clear Congress understands the severity of this issue and is working to address.

I am proud to have led several bipartisan legislative efforts to improve maternal mortality and reduce health care disparities.

In 2022, Congress passed the Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act, which helps address maternal mortality, particularly maternal health disparities in the Black community. It also supports research examining the best practices to reduce and prevent racial discrimination in the American health care system.

The same year, Congress passed my legislation, the John Lewis National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Research Endowment Revitalization Act. This provides funding to institutions, including Xavier University, to conduct research and address minority health disparities.

And last year, in this Committee, we passed the Preventing Maternal Deaths Reauthorization Act, legislation led in the House by our witness Dr. Burgess. The bill would direct CDC to provide hospitals and other providers information on the best practices to prevent maternal mortality. This reauthorization has not yet become law, but we are pushing for passage this Congress.

This work shows a bipartisan commitment in Congress to addressing health care disparities. But there is more to do.

The Connected Maternal Online Monitoring Services (Connected MOM) Act, which I introduced with Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and with Dr. Burgess in the House, would promote Medicaid coverage of remote monitoring technologies for pregnant women who are at a higher risk of complications. The need for mothers in underserved urban or rural areas to travel, sometimes hours, to a doctor's office can act as a major impediment to care. This legislation would allow their physician to remotely monitor her health, watching for indicators of potential pregnancy complications.

It is a bipartisan bill that improves access to crucial health care for mothers and prevents maternal deaths. While this bill is in Finance jurisdiction, I look forward to the discussion today on how we can continue to make progress on maternal mortality in the HELP Committee.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here and providing your expertise on how we can better address these important issues facing our communities. 

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