WASHINGTON – Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) joined the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs and the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services for a joint hearing entitled “Lowering the Cost of Healthcare: Technology’s Role in Driving Affordability” to examine the main causes of rising healthcare costs in the United States, including burdensome regulations from the Biden administration, and to analyze how medical technology innovations can help alleviate this problem.
Mr. Brian Whorley, Chief Executive Officer at Paytient Technologies, Inc.; Dr. Darius Lakdawalla, Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation and Chief Scientific Officer at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California; Dr. Ziad Obermeyer, Blue Cross of California Distinguished Associate Professor, Health Policy and Management, University of California-Berkeley; and Mr. Chris Jacobs, Founder of Juniper Research Group joined the committee to testify as witnesses.
Watch the Congressman's full remarks here.
Read the transcript of the Congressman's opening remarks below:
"Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate your sentiment. Before I get into questions, I think it's important to acknowledge what was just said. I want to start with some of the positives I just heard. The truth is that, yes, more competition in healthcare is going to be critical to deliver affordable care to consumers. And that's something, I think, which is a very bipartisan statement. I think both sides of the aisle could agree on that. I think one of the other things that was also just acknowledged is that the entire purpose of the Affordable Care Act was not the Affordable Care Act. It was to take the United States towards single-payer healthcare. That was the design 15 years ago. So, the American people need to understand the reason why costs are rising in healthcare and in health insurance is by design by Congressional Democrats at the time and by then President Barack Obama. They did want a public option. They wanted to put a public option in the Affordable Care Act that was going to be lower costs than what their own regulatory framework would allow in the private markets. The only reason they didn't get the public option is because they didn't have the votes. A guy named Scott Brown won a Senate election in Massachusetts. I know that sounds crazy today, but he did, and it stopped them from actually pushing forward with the public option. Which, by the way, its entire design was to move America towards single-payer healthcare. The arc of history in healthcare needs to be clear on this point. Single-payer healthcare does not work. It never will. Because, to the point of my colleague from the other side of the aisle, single-payer is the very definition of vertical integration of the healthcare system, which will not lead to lower costs for the American people."
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