Senator Marshall: Americans Deserve Affordability & My Plan Delivers It

Senator Marshall Delivers Remarks on the Senate Floor Detailing The Marshall Plan

Washington - On Tuesday,U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate detailing his five-pillar plan to make health care affordable for hardworking Americans.

Click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall's full remarks.

Senator Marshall's full speech as delivered:

"Mr. President, it seems like it was just yesterday. The year was 2010, I was in the surgeon's lounge, and what I remember on the headline news of the day was Nancy Pelosi saying something to the effect of, we've got to pass the bill so we can read it. And I knew this bill had something to do with health care. They were calling it the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, as we now know it, by the not-so-affordable Care Act.

"So, the doctors and I scrambled, and we said, we'd better see what's in this bill. And we said, first of all, gosh, it looked like the insurance companies wrote this bill. The federal government is going to give direct subsidies, corporate welfare, to insurance companies, to health insurance companies. It was supposed to max out at $50 billion a year. Today it's $150 billion a year.

"The next thing, when we looked at that bill, we said, my goodness, there is so many rules and regulations. We're going to have to take nurses off the floor, turn them into data entry. They're going to, we're going to, have to stay hours at a time, after practice, after office hours, just to do these electronic medical records. We said that this overregulation was going to lead to the consolidation of the industry.

"Here we are, 15 years later, Mr. President, that's exactly what happened. We had three PBMs controlling 85% of prescription drugs. Almost every state has one or two healthcare insurance companies controlling the market. There's typically one or two hospital systems controlling healthcare in a large geographic area; the smaller companies could just never keep up. So, what we've seen is 15 years of failed policies.

"But families deserve real reform, and that's why we're trying to reform, to fix the not-so-Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. And of all the things we saw coming, we thought it would be fraud. But when fraud really spiked is when we added these enhanced premium tax credits, the Biden enhanced premium tax credits, and just like the original ACA, these enhanced premium tax credits were voted for only with Democrat votes, and what it allowed is for patients to have health insurance without paying anything towards the premium.

"So, we had headhunters that went across the country. They got a person's name, they got their birth date, they enrolled them in Obamacare, and the patient never even knew they were on it. But the federal government has been sending spending money to these insurance companies. In fact, one out of three people on Obamacare in a given year never makes an insurance claim. One out of three people on Obamacare never makes an insurance claim. That's because most of them don't even know they're on it. And when there's no money coming out of one of their accounts, they have no idea that they're on it.

"It's like shoplifting at a grocery store. We all end up paying for that. The rest of the consumers have to pay for the shoplifting. And that's what's happening in Obamacare, is everybody else is paying for that increased premium.

"So, the first thing that we want to do is to stop the fraud in the Affordable Care Act, and we do that, you know, several ways. How about something as simple as checking IDs? You know, I can't get a hotel room tonight, but I can when I apply for Medicare, for Social Security, you need an ID. We need to have job verification. We need to check IDs. We need technology to figure out when dead people should have the stipend stop.

"The recent GAO report showed that 58,000 dead people were having premiums paid to these insurance companies for an average of about nine months each. So, think of the cost of that to the federal government and to taxpayers. 58,000 dead people having an insurance premium paid monthly for nine months before the federal government realizes that they're dead. Probably a third of that $150 billion a year we're spending on Obamacare right now is in fraud, waste, and or abuse.

"The next thing we want to talk about is price transparency. Could you imagine, let's just say that, boy, you had a great year, and you're living that American dream, and you're going to go buy a new pickup truck. And, you know, maybe your family usually drove Fords, and maybe your family drove Chevys. But you want to Dodge. So, you know you want four-wheel drive. You know you want a nice v8 engine to be able to pull your boat and to get unstuck when you're out hunting and fishing, but so you'd like to know the price. So, what is the difference between a Dodge four-wheel drive truck, eight-cylinder engine, maybe a Hemi, versus that Chevy or Ford model, which are similar? Could you imagine trying to make that decision without knowing the price tags?

"Could you imagine going into McDonald's and you're trying to decide whether you want the Big Mac or you want the filet of fish and not knowing the difference in the prices of that. So why in healthcare do we satisfy? Are we satisfied with not knowing the prices?

"So, one piece of our solution to solve this riddle of healthcare is to force all healthcare providers to provide prices. So, your doctor says that you need your knee scope, and your doctor says you need an MRI. They can give you a code you get on your technology, and what the technology shows you within 60 miles, all the different facilities that are covered by your insurance, and what the cost would be for that procedure, and some outcomes as well. You would be amazed.

"You can save 1000s of dollars on an MRI by doing a little shopping with the same quality you need for a joint replacement. You might save 40, 50, $60,000 for having that hip replaced at a surgical hospital, as opposed to a traditional hospital setting. And guess what, the infection rates are lower here at this surgical hospital. So, our bill forces again, all health care providers to show you the two costs. This turns patients back into consumers. It is the only industry in America where we don't allow consumerism, and the ACA has just complicated this.

"So, what our bill does is require, again, all healthcare companies, healthcare providers, to show you the true cost. No excuses. Think about the savings of this. Even I underestimated the savings of this. This will mean $1,000 a month per family. If we adopt our price tags bill, it'll save the average American family $1,000 a month.

"America spends $5 trillion a year on health care now. $5 trillion a year. If we give the American consumers price tags, it's going to save a trillion dollars, just like Black Friday, when we let people out there shopping. What's the first thing you want to know? You want to know the prices. And by the way, 80% of health care decisions are made by women. And I know these women are expert shoppers. If you give them the technology, if you give them the prices, then they can figure out what they want to buy and where the best place to do it is.

"Our third pillar is to bridge the subsidy issue for families. Look, I don't have to tell any American the challenges with the cost of health care. I never cared for the subsidies. The Biden era subsidies, again, were passed with all Democratic votes, but here we are, and they're going to expire. The Democrats set them up to expire on December 31^st. That it was really a covid-era extra bonus, remember, the other 80% of the premiums are still going to be covered. The original Obamacare subsidies are not expiring, and they typically cover about 80% of the premiums.

"So, I'm willing to extend those for a year, as long as we get some of these other things, as long as there's long-term reform, we get our price tag bills, we address the fraud, and then what we would do is slowly start putting money into your health care savings account. Let me say that again, the federal government, rather than sending money to the insurance companies, we're going to put money in your health care savings account to pay towards your deductibles. Remember, your deductibles under Obamacare went from $1,000 a year to $15,000 a year.

"So, our bill would start taking part of that money and turning you into a consumer. You combine our price tags bill, putting money into your savings accounts, then we're going to see true consumerism, and we're going to see the cost of health care come down 20%.

"Our next pillar I'd like to talk about is a high-risk pool protection. Now, what does that mean? Certainly, Obamacare did some good things, and one of them was to protect people with preexisting conditions. You may know, Mr. President, but I was an obstetrician. I delivered a baby every day for 25 years. And the most common preexisting condition that wasn't covered was pregnancy. Less than half of pregnancies are covered. Less than 50% of pregnancies are covered, and people buy their health insurance, but they didn't think they needed maternity coverage, but guess what? They did.

"So, I want to make sure everyone's preexisting conditions are covered. I want everyone to have meaningful, affordable access to health care, and want to make sure we protect this but one way we protect that issue and drive the cost of health care down is a reinsurance pool, a high risk, invisible reinsurance pool, so that when you hit, when any person in America hits a certain spending amount, they would go into this high risk pool. They would be state-run. We need state money in the game as well.

"Everybody who's getting insurance through that state needs to be contributing probably 3 or $4 a month to that high-risk pool as well. And if the insurance companies knew that you're going to be able to grasp out those outliers, it's going to bring the premiums down for everybody else.

"So we talk a lot about CSRs, you could take half of the money that we would save by funding the CSRs and put that money into the start of high-risk pools, and all of a sudden, you'd have something going here. If you would implement our plan, I really do think you're going to see health care costs go down by a third, maybe 50% but at least by a third, between price tags, between funding your HSAs, by making patients consumers, by setting up these high risk pools, we're going to start decreasing the cost of health care for everybody.

"So those are our five pillars. Let's stop the fraud. Let's give patients price tags. Let's bridge the subsidy. I'm willing to include the subsidy for a year longer if we start bridging to a more, better future where we're not throwing good money after bad money. We set up the high-risk pools, and you end up with lower costs for patients.

"Mr. President, we're fighting for patients. We're fighting for hard-working Americans. We're not fighting here for big business. We're not here fighting for insurance companies. Small businesses are in desperate need to lower the cost of health care. Every business I talk to, every union I talk to, every self-employed person I talk to, the cost of health care is a top-three issue, and these pillars will help address that.

"This plan was not made overnight. This plan, as I said, started back in 2010 in a surgeon's lounge, and when I was elected to come here in 2016, this was one of my three or four issues that I wanted to address, and I've continued to revise and refine and improve this plan from year to year to meet this moment. In fact, it was 2018 that now Speaker Mike Johnson and I put together a comprehensive replacement bill for the ACA. And here we are today, no better off. Prices are skyrocketing, and we continue to struggle.

"I'm encouraged. I think we have some momentum. I continue discussions across the aisle, and what I hear my friends across the aisle saying is that we share a lot of the same goals. We want Americans to have affordable, meaningful health care, and by the way, again, a $15,000 deductible for a family making $120,000 a year, that $15,000 deductible is not the same as access to care.

"This is not a conclusive list. There needs to be more. There are more things we can do. We need to expand the Health Care Association plans. We need to allow insurance to be sold across state lines. We need to take on the PBMs. This is just the start, but this would be the backbone. I don't know why any of my friends across the aisle would be opposed to any one of these particular pillars.

"Our text for our bill is out. The legislative text is out there. Now we welcome co-sponsors. We welcome this as an opportunity to build towards a bipartisan bill in January, Mr. President. Americans deserve transparency. They deserve accountability. They deserve affordability, and this plan delivers it. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield back."

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