Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRAUN. It was doomed to fail because when has Big Government and Big Business ever resulted in something that is going to cost less and be more effective?

Under ObamaCare, decisions are made by the healthcare industry executives and the Federal Government bureaucrats--not patients, not consumers. This program is authorizing millions of dollars we don't have to prop up a system that is not working. If ObamaCare was working, it would sell itself, but it doesn't work. Costs continue to rise, and Americans continue to be stuck with the bill.

I believe there are things that ObamaCare does that we should keep. I actually incorporated it into my own business's plan back before the law required you to do it. I covered preexisting conditions and no cap on coverage. The pillars of ObamaCare--we should all accept that.

When they added keeping kids on there until they are 26, that is fine too. Those ships have sailed. But the Affordable Care Act is not remotely affordable, and it is only going to get worse.

I applaud the Trump administration for doing their due diligence on how healthcare policy changes are going to affect average Americans. They are taking the approach to not go deeper in the hole with something like ObamaCare but to reform the industry by making it competitive, transparent, eliminate the barriers to entry and, yes, encourage the healthcare consumer to get involved in his or her own well-being.

I do believe President Trump is right. The Republicans can be the party of healthcare without involving more government, but we need to do that by putting more power back into the hands of the American people, not ceding total power to government bureaucrats and big healthcare executives.

I have a better idea. The truth in pricing act--my bill I am countering with--encapsulates some of the ideas behind the proposed and final rules announced by the White House last week, which I fully support. The complex, opaque nature of healthcare pricing makes it difficult for consumers to anticipate, measure, and compare healthcare costs and coverage options. Hospitals have a chargemaster that nobody can understand, which actually inflates retail prices billable to a patient or an insurance provider, but insurers usually negotiate steep discounts to these inflated prices that consumers and the employers who pay all the bills never see. It is done behind closed doors.

More pricing transparency would address this market failure. Increased competition gives more decision making to the people who are supposed to use it.

This is why I introduced the truth in pricing act, which requires health insurers to disclose negotiated rates, including any cost- sharing obligations for consumers for healthcare services covered under their health plans. It is difficult for insured consumers to shop for healthcare services in our current, opaque, and broken market within which ObamaCare works, especially if they don't know actual prices. Insurers have the unique ability to provide this information to consumers.

Why subsidize insurance companies to pay for navigators and insurance agents when we can instead make the market work better and be more consumer-driven and transparent? This is the way we break the stranglehold that government in big healthcare has on healthcare delivery.

913, the True Price Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Across the board, when it comes to hospitals and exposing their charge practices, drug companies becoming transparent and competing, health insurance companies getting rid of the secret agreements behind the scenes, and even practitioners, publish your prices in print or on the web so we as employers and consumers of healthcare can try to make the right decisions and bring costs down.

I do object to the original request.

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