Accelerating Kid Access to Care Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for the Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act, which will help families access lifesaving care for children with complex medical conditions.

In Georgia, we are blessed to have world-class children's hospitals that care for kids across the country. However, in some cases, patients with rare and complex diseases have to travel out of State to receive specialized care when the services they need are not available in their own State.

The process is difficult and full of red tape, often delaying children and their families from receiving the care they desperately need and, in some cases, blocking access to care altogether.

The Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act will allow States to streamline the process for out-of-State pediatric care providers to enroll in another State's Medicaid program, while also providing important guardrails. This is a commonsense policy that will help children with complex medical conditions access critical care.

Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to see the bipartisan amendment includes crucial pharmacy benefit manager reforms for my Drug Price Transparency and Medicaid Act. This provision would prohibit spread pricing in Medicaid and clarify that States should reimburse PBMs contracting with Medicaid managed care organizations for an administrative fee for managing the pharmacy benefit for Medicaid beneficiaries.

This will save taxpayers millions of dollars and will protect patients, pharmacies, and others from middleman tactics that drive up prescription drug prices.

Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Miller-Meeks) and the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Mrs. Trahan) for working on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to support the Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act.

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