Affordable Health Care For America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, today I will vote in strong opposition to H.R. 3962, the ``Affordable Health Care for America Act.''

This government takeover of health care is filled with tax increases, job killing mandates, Medicare cuts, bureaucrat additions, and entitlement expansions. This bill will lead to higher health care premiums and a growth in long-term health care costs.

Despite this bill's many faults, I support the bill's language establishing a market for biosimilars which balances the desire to provide cheaper biologics with the need to continue incentivizing investment in research and development. The bipartisan language approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this year would create an FDA approval process that allows for the continued development of biosimilar products.

This language appropriately protects intellectual property rights by encouraging the creation of new technologies and helps protect patients from possibly dangerous, insufficiently tested biosimilars. Because biologics are more complex and susceptible to change during formulation, it is of the utmost importance that we only support a process that provides for a safe biosimilar market.

It is critical at this time of 10.2 percent nationwide unemployment that the federal government allow job creating industries, like biotechnology, to continue to invest and create jobs. It is unfortunate that the Majority wrapped up a good biosimilar bill in a bad health care bill, but I hope that we have the opportunity to support the Eshoo-Inslee-Barton biosimilar provisions in a separate legislative vote.

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