Healthcare Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with people like my colleague, Dr. Drew Ferguson, from Georgia.

I am so proud to stand tonight with the President of the United States. I know that tonight Mr. Trump is speaking loudly on behalf of our healthcare bill. Mr. Trump is ready to take the fight on with us who feel like we need to move this health care forward.

I am not sure how many of you grew up without power steering in your vehicles, but if you know anything about the lack of power steering-- and I think back to the tractors I drove growing up, and that tractor, you could not turn that wheel until you started the tractor moving--or if you had a Ford truck or a Dodge truck or a Chevy truck and it didn't have power steering, you couldn't turn that truck until it started moving.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to get this bill moving. We have to move health care forward. I am so tired of the rhetoric of repeal and replace. I am telling you, my constituents sent me here to fix health care. Forget the political rhetoric. I am ready to fix health care. I am ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with Republicans, with Democrats, with people down the aisle, across the aisle, and with our President to get this healthcare bill passed.

Unfortunately, ObamaCare has failed. When this first came about, I was so excited. I was hoping that this would be a healthcare bill that would work. But, unfortunately, it is true that this healthcare bill is dying very quickly.

One-third of counties across this country no longer have a provider to take care of the exchange. My own State of Kansas is down to one provider. Today, even more insurance companies are bailing. This bill is dying. Doing nothing is simply not an option, Mr. Speaker.

As I visited with thousands of patients over the last several years and thousands of my constituents, they said there are several things that they thought were important that we save from this healthcare bill, the Affordable Care Act, and I think we have done just that: Number one, we have protected the preexisting issue conditions; Number two, we are letting children stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26;

Number three, we are ensuring that women are not charged more for health insurance just because they are a woman; and Number four, we protected the doughnut hole and kept it closed for Medicare.

So I think we have saved the best things of the Affordable Care Act.

So what have we removed? Mr. Speaker, we removed almost $1 trillion of taxes. This is the most significant entitlement reform in our generation, the most significant entitlement reform since the 1960s started Medicaid.
What can we expect out of this bill? We expect premiums to decrease by 10 percent.

We expect to start reprioritizing Medicaid moneys. I want to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that we prioritize Medicaid moneys for those who need it the most: those with disabilities, children, and the elderly.

And I want to make sure these people are at the front of the Medicaid line rather than at the end of the line.
This country cannot afford to give Medicaid to able-bodied Americans.

We need to prioritize the dollars that we have for those that need it the most.

Mr. Speaker, we spent $580 billion last year on Medicaid. We are on our way to spending $1 trillion on Medicaid if we don't do something soon. This country cannot afford to spend $1 trillion on Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, these are only the first steps of bending the cost curve downward for health care. We have to do more than just this bill. There are going to be more steps.

I have complete faith in Dr. Tom Price, our new HHS Secretary, that he will be deregulating health care, which is the most regulated business in the country right now. Give Dr. Price 60, 90 days to deregulate medicine and start encouraging competition, and we will start bending this cost curve downward.

We need to empower free markets. We need to empower States to have more local control. We are expanding healthcare savings accounts, but there are many more things we need to do. This is just the start of healthcare reform.

This is the first chapter of a new book on healthcare reform. There are many more chapters to go. I cannot wait to improve health care, to improve quality and start driving the cost curve downward.

Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for allowing me the time to stand shoulder to shoulder with our President, as well as with Dr. Drew Ferguson, who is representing the State of Georgia so proudly. I am so proud to be called his freshman colleague.

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