WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) delivered the following opening statement at a hearing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As delivered.
“As a key leader in the Trump Administration and the Make America Healthy Again movement, you have given voice to the reality that Americans do not believe that the health care status quo works for them. Despite spending $5.3 trillion annually on health care, more than 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease. That has cost us dearly – in terms of our health, quality of life, as well as taxpayer dollars.
“Thank you for advocating on behalf of the millions of Americans who are demanding better from our health and food systems, and for using HHS as a platform to Make America Healthy Again.
“Our health care system is full of misaligned incentives – the most glaring being that reimbursement is concentrated to patients who are already sick and does too little to help Americans stay healthy. Just this week, we held a field hearing in Florida on preventive care where we heard from local medical professionals who – because they are at the forefront of modern medicine – help their patients get back to the basics of a healthy life: nutrition, wellness, exercise, and preventive medicine. It was clear from witness testimony that the movement you help lead has begun putting lots of thought into how we realign health incentives in support of this goal.
“It’s not just lifestyle choices undermining the health of the American people. Industry consolidation – with huge companies swallowing up various parts of the health care system – has helped pad the bottom line of big corporations while doing little to support the health or well-being of working-class Americans.
“Sixteen years after Democrats promised Obamacare would be the silver bullet for lowering prices, health care costs and insurance company profits have never been higher.
“That’s why the Ways and Means Committee is focused on addressing consolidation and vertical integration in the health care industry to expand access and lower costs.
“Earlier this year, we questioned the CEOs of major health insurance empires about how it could be that they are focused on lowering costs for patients and not expanding revenue for themselves when each insurer owns pharmacies, medical providers, and PBM middlemen. It would not surprise you to know they did not have good answers. Soon, we will have the same conversation with large hospital systems that have driven up prices without expanding access to care.
“That lack of access is especially important for the 60 million rural Americans who have higher rates of chronic diseases and have 43 percent higher mortality rates than urban Americans. We also need to do more to protect access to rural health care. I want to thank you for distributing the first installment of funds to states from the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program that Republicans enacted in the Working Families Tax Cuts. Rural communities in my home state of Missouri are thrilled to have this program to protect access to care and expand the quality of services offered to patients.
“I would ask that you and your department work with Congress to continue stewardship and oversight of those critical funds to transform how health care services are delivered to rural Americans. And I hope we can find ways to work together to meaningfully reverse the incentives in health care that make it profitable to consolidate access at the expense of rural communities.
“Another critical priority of your administration is the First Lady’s Fostering the Future program. Mrs. Trump joined the Ways and Means Committee yesterday for a special roundtable featuring two foster youth, who shared their stories and highlighted the importance this initiative to help more foster youth live a life of their own choosing.
“Members of this committee have introduced bipartisan legislation that complements the First Lady’s initiative and represents the most significant reforms to the Chafee foster youth program since 1999. We look forward to your partnership in turning these policies into law and then implementing them.
“We also need to work together to address fraud in our health care system. Every dollar stolen by fraudsters, illegal immigrants, and criminals is one less dollar that benefits the American people – including the $60 billion lost in waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare alone. We must hold the criminals who steal billions from the American people accountable.
“One has to look no further than the alleged $3.5 billion of Medicare hospice fraud in LA County alone to know that this is a massive scandal that is waiting to be uncovered. I applaud your work to help uncover numerous outrageous examples of fraud, and look forward to providing you and the department the tools you need to root it out.
“I am glad that the Trump Administration is taking proactive steps to lower health care costs and expand access to rural communities, and the President’s new anti-fraud task force is so important for identifying and prosecuting criminals.”