Empowering Patients

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. Speaker, I actually applaud the goal of our Democratic colleagues in terms of the health bill they are putting out. Access, quality, and controlling costs are things that we should all aspire for. Absolutely.

And I agree with parts of the legislation. Guaranteed access, for example, is just wonderful. But, of course our concern is that CBO comment that it's not going to control cost, not achieve one of these goals, but rather, reset it to increase it. And we know as the cost of health care increases, that will be one more thing that inhibits growth and jobs.

So what can we do? One, we do need fundamental reform, which, as the CBO has pointed out, this bill does provide. We need to put the patient in charge of health care decisions and dollars. We need to empower patients to make value-conscious decisions, empower them with the information they need for reasonable decisions by increasing transparency on the pricing of health care.

Let's empower them by incentivizing wellness programs at lower costs and improved lives. Let's empower them with things such as HSAs, which have been shown to decrease costs by 30 percent and, indeed, give insurance to those previously uninsured. Empowering patients is the only way to lower cost and increase access.

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