Affordable Health Care For America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, the Pelosi health care bill creates 111 new bureaucracies and it only cuts one program: Medicare.

I chair the Rural Health Care Coalition. I care about health care especially as it affects rural States, rural Americans like Kansans. And I have concluded that this bill will not make health care more affordable or more accessible for rural America. The standard by which I judge this is not a Republican plan or a Democrat plan, but what is good and right for America.

I've concluded that coupled with all the other bad ideas of this Congress--stimulus packages, bailouts, Cash for Clunkers, cap-and-trade--we will be leaving our children with more debt, less freedom, diminished personal responsibility, and fewer economic opportunities. Worse, we will have failed to honor the dreams for a better life for another generation of Americans. This I will not, cannot support.

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Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, after reviewing H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, listening to the concerns of Kansans, and visiting Kansas hospitals to speak with doctors, nurses, patients, and administrators, I have concluded that this bill will be harmful to Kansas and I strongly oppose it. However, I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options to patients without destroying a healthy and functioning industry in this country. These provisions were one of the few areas in the bill adopted on an overwhelming bipartisan vote for the Eshoo-Inslee-Barton, EIB amendment in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Creating a pathway for new products that does not destroy the ability or the incentives for innovator companies to develop breakthrough technologies and, at the same time providing a safe and effective way to bring competition to benefit patients and encourage treatments, is a necessary objective. New biosimilars have the potential to fundamentally change the course of many diseases. We need to promote patient safety and ensure incentives to encourage the continued development of a critical weapon to fight diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer. I wish we could remove these specific provisions from H.R. 3962 and consider them separately because it would most likely pass with the kind of overwhelming bipartisan support.

However, these provisions are only the first step in a long path to the marketing of these new biosimilar products. New research and clinical testing will have to occur and the FDA will implement regulations that will ensure this research is done safely and effectively. Biopharmaceuticals represent a tremendous growth opportunity for our burgeoning bioscience industry in Kansas, and we need to work to see that new biotechnology products continue to reach patients and medical professionals.

As this new biosimilar market develops in the United States, we need to ensure that we foster innovative products in this country for the creation of jobs and research that will go into determining whether these products are interchangeable with the innovator's products. Testing and research on these interchangeable biosimilar products should occur in this country to ensure that it is done properly and safely and to benefit our patients and our economy.

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Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to H.R. 3962, Speaker Pelosi's health care reform bill. This amendment would maintain the current policy of preventing federal funding for abortion and for health benefits packages that include abortion. I feel a special obligation to protect innocent, young life.

I recently sponsored H. Con. Res. 169, legislation urging members of Congress to eliminate taxpayer-funded abortions from any proposed health care reform package. Directing taxpayer dollars to fund abortions is a clear violation of many Americans' deeply held beliefs and Americans should not be forced to compromise their core moral beliefs as a means to health care reform. Additionally, on September 28, 2009, I urged Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leadership, along with 182 of my House colleagues, to allow members of the House to vote their consciences with regard to abortion and health care reform by allowing consideration of an amendment to prohibit government funding of abortion.

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