Chairman Arrington Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on How to Solve Skyrocketing Health Care Costs

Chairman Arrington Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on How to Solve Skyrocketing Health Care Costs

"With reconciliation 2.0 being a serious consideration, we won't let this historic moment pass us by without endeavoring to fix what is broken." - Chairman Arrington

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) delivered the following remarks at the "Reverse the Curse: Skyrocketing Health Care Costs and America's Fiscal Future" hearing.

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Remarks as Delivered:

"I think most of the time, in addressing the big challenges facing our country, both Democrats and Republicans can agree. I think we certainly agree about the increasing and unsustainable cost of health care.

"The difference comes in how to address it. Health care now consumes nearly one-fifth of our economy-almost $6 trillion-and roughly half of that spending comes from the federal government.

"In the 1980s, the share of health care spending was 70 percent private, 30 percent government. Today it's 50/50. A third of the federal budget, if you exclude interest payments, is health care expenditures.

"And if we look back to 1975, we were spending $19 billion on health care as a nation. Today, it's almost $2 trillion, and in 10 years that will double.

"While demographics are certainly one of the factors in rising costs, they are not the sole driver of runaway health care inflation hitting our families-especially young families and middle-class families. Health care spending is now crowding out national priorities like defense and driving our debt to levels higher, as a share of our economy, than during World War II and its aftermath.

"Having World War-level debt and pandemic-level deficits in times of peace and prosperity is unsustainable-and it should be unacceptable to the leaders on this Committee who represent all parts of this country.

"I'll try to be an equal opportunity criticizer for the Democrats, my colleagues on the Left. They've gone all-in with government-run health care. I think their poster child for "affordable health care" was Obamacare.

"I hope after living with that for 15 years, we can all agree that more subsidies, regulations, and mandates are not the solution. And simply having health insurance coverage isn't the solution for affordability for working families across this great nation. We've seen deductibles and premiums both double since the advent of Obamacare.

"I was very disappointed that 17 of my Republican colleagues joined the Democrats to extend what was supposed to be a COVID-era expansion of Obamacare. It was, according to all the watchdog groups, riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. So that was a big disappointment.

"But on the part of Republicans, I don't think we do enough. We do more criticizing of our Democrat colleagues and their failed central planning of the health care economy than we… execute on the market-based reforms and free market policies that would result in better value for not only the patients and families, who are paying for this, but for taxpayers and for future taxpayers.

"I hope that with reconciliation 2.0 being a serious consideration, that we won't let this historic moment pass us by without endeavoring to fix what is broken.

"We reduced taxes and the tax burden on our fellow Americans, and we reduced spending by twice the amount we've ever reduced mandatory spending-$1.6 trillion. And we're seeing results in terms of economic traction: wages are up, interest and inflation down, etc. I still think the biggest tax on our families and on our small businesses is the cost of health care.

"In this back and forth, there's always the obligatory we think Obamacare was a failed experiment. They'll have their obligatory political, partisan comments. I hope we can talk about the delivery of care and the runaway cost to just the delivery, not the Obamacare market, not the private insurance market, but delivery of care in general-site neutral, pharmacy benefit managers-there are plenty of big plays to run that...

"…I want bold action in this historic time, because I'm not sure we'll get the opportunity again. If we can work with Democrats, we should. And if they won't, or we can't, we should have the courage to go it alone and do the things that we know are going to yield the outcomes that are so desperately needed."