Committees play out the regular duties of congressional lawmaking, which have not changed much in more than a century. Committees decide which bills move forward to consideration by the House or Senate as a whole. Senate committees vary from banking, armed services, agriculture, natural resources and so on. The Senate divides work between standing committees into subcommittees. Senate committees monitor on-going government operations.
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is a committee under the U.S. Senate with a total of 23 members. The Ranking Minority Member is Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander as the Majority Chairman. There are three subcommittees: Children and Families, Employment and Workplace Safety, and Primary Health and Retirement Security. June 18th was the recent full committee hearing on Lower Health Care Costs Act. Senator Alexander begins the meeting with a startling statistic that “up to half of the 3.5 trillion, the U.S. spent on healthcare in 2017 was unnecessary.” This tapeworm on the American economy is the biggest financial problem facing American families. How do we reduce what the people pay out of their own pockets from primary care to prescription drugs? Some suggestions are to end surprise billing, more transparency, require patients to be given more information on the cost and quality of their care, and to increase prescription drug competition.
Senator Murray and Alexander are working on bipartisan bills along with other committee members for this Lower Health Care Costs Act of 2019. The debate about lower cost health care is always an ongoing debate. This 2019 act will provide Americans better options in healthcare. This topic is very important for our country, as many people are unable to afford healthcare. There are people who have no choice but to ration life-saving medications, such as insulin, due to irrational price markups. Issues like this are killing people.
“A functional market does not regularly drive families into bankruptcy.” – President and CEO of Nonprofit Pacific Business Group on Health, Ms. Elizabeth Mitchell
Our healthcare has become a luxury, enabling anti-competitive behavior with consolidated markets in an industry that has a patient’s interests last. This bill can help mend a broken market, where a majority of citizens rely on crowd-funding to treat illnesses.
“Half of the public cannot see a doctor when they need to because of healthcare cost.” – Mr. Isasi of Families of USA
*Watch the June 18th, 2019 meeting to listen to more information about this Lowered Healthcare Cost Act
