Washington, DC - Energy and Commerce Committee Republican Leader Greg Walden (R-OR) delivered remarks at a Health Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Health Care Lifeline: The Affordable Care Act and the COVID-19 Pandemic"
As Prepared For Delivery
Thank you, Madame Chairwoman. I want to thank you for this hearing.
It could give us a great opportunity to hear from the experts on how COVID-19’s pandemic has affected health care coverage in this country. We need to have this discussion. We know Americans were promised, when the Affordable Care Act passed, a $2500 reduction in our insurance premiums. Low and behold that obviously never happened; and in fact just the opposite.
I remember all the stories when the ACA took effect about people who were promised they could keep their health plan or their doctor, and neither of those things panned out well either.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of folks who have no access to care - still in the 10 to 20 percent range in some places. I think even as troubling, if not more so, is the issues that have risen around the edges. Chairman Pallone and I have worked on this issue of surprise medical billing - something President Trump has been up front leading on for most of his time in office. And we are very close - it should become law to stop this practice of surprise medical billing, where people who play by all the rules and think they should be covered. Then, as we heard in our hearings, it turns out they get stuck with a bill for $50,000 dollars because somebody contracted out some facility within a hospital that their insurance said was covered.
I am troubled that we have not provided continued and robust funding for our Community Health Centers. It is a travesty that this Congress has not done that. As you know, Chairman Pallone and I, with our bill on surprise medical billing, could’ve funded that. And yet, for whatever set of reasons that hasn’t happened either. So our Community Health Centers are left in the lurch, wondering how long will they have funding, how can they do their hiring, and they are left hanging out there.
So while we are having this hearing today that certainly will be informative, I sort of suspect that it will go down the lines of my friends’ opening statement and wade into some of the politics of health care as we’re 45 days out from the election.
It is unfortunate. We have worked together on a lot of issues and there is certainly a lot we can do going forward. It is unfortunate that we did not find common ground on the issues related to the high cost of prescription drugs, but trading off innovation and cures - especially as we are in the fight on COVID - for the illusion that you are going to get cheaper prices just did not make sense.
Here we are - having worked together on 21st Century Cures legislation in the past and investing in our National Institutes of Health in record amounts - looking to the various companies that spend night and day trying to come up with a vaccine as they move through their trials. We have never needed innovation more, not only in the vaccine world but also in the world of therapies.
Finally, I would just say we need to work together to modernize the Strategic National Stockpile. There have been a lot of lessons learned in every phase as we’ve dealt with this unprecedented pandemic. A pandemic that, by the way, has killed millions across the world - hundreds of thousands here in the U.S. It is not just in the U.S. So, I think that Operation Warp Speed is something we should be proud of, as the administration has moved at record pace to break down bureaucratic barriers while maintaining safety and efficacy of whatever becomes available - either treatments, which they are working on, as well as vaccines. The Administration is moving at record speed through this process to get these out to the public.
I would close with this: I know the issue of pre-existing conditions is something being raised. Let’s not forget that Republicans, in 1996, were part of the reason we ever put pre-existing conditions protections into law. I have said multiple times this Congress - from day one literally said - if we’re going to have this litigation in the courts shouldn’t we come together as a Congress and reaffirm pre-existing condition protections for the American people? That effort has been shot down every time by my friends from the other side of the aisle.
There is a lot we can find common ground on, and Americans expect us to do that. I hope that after this hearing is behind us, we can still work together this Fall and get things done.
