Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act of 2023
Floor Speech
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Mrs. CAMMACK. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend and colleague, Representative McMorris Rodgers for yielding.
Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of H.R. 485, the Protecting Health Care for all Patients Act. This bill, led by Chairwoman Rodgers, would prohibit all Federal healthcare programs from using quality-adjusted life years, or as you may hear them called, QALYs, as criteria to determine coverage for often life-altering treatments for patients. Quality-adjusted life years are measures that discount the value of a life based on disability, age, or terminal illness, and are currently used by all Federal healthcare payers, except for Medicare.
Put plainly, programs like Medicaid and the Department of Veterans Affairs allow unelected, nameless, faceless bureaucrats to put a dollar value on the life of a patient to determine whether the treatment is cost-effective or not. In doing so, these programs and agencies discount an individual's worth and need for medical care based upon their disability status and whether they have a chronic illness.
Ultimately, the use of QALYs amounts to discrimination, something that is all too common in our healthcare system. Patients with disabilities, for instance, are often denied the ability to receive lifesaving organ transplants.
As the sponsor of the Charlotte Woodward Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act, I personally and firmly believe that patients with disabilities and other chronic conditions should receive equal treatment, whether it is for an organ transplant or coverage of essential medicines.
I applaud Chairwoman Rodgers' efforts to protect the lives of all patients, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
No bureaucrat should be able to coldly determine the life and value of a patient.
This bill that we have an opportunity to vote on today is a huge step forward in fighting discrimination within our healthcare system.
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