Doggett Opening Statement at Markup of H.R. 4822

(As prepared for delivery)

Increasing health care consolidation combined with flawed system design and policies that sanction monopolistic behavior is failing patients across the health care system. Prices increase year after year, emergency room wait times lengthen, doctors’ offices close, and quality of care suffers.

As a long-time advocate for greater transparency, I certainly support the overarching goal of today’s markup to ensure more and better data concerning health care prices. Data cannot directly lower costs, but with data we can identify inefficiencies and waste of taxpayer dollars with the potential to lower costs if policymakers show the courage to do it.
Unfortunately, what could have been a meaningful, bipartisan product advancing new policies and strengthening prior work has instead become a partisan effort to weaken bipartisan legislation unanimously approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

This bill largely codifies what is already required of hospitals and some insurers. Meanwhile, some of the worst actors are shielded from any meaningful accountability. Once again, Medicare Advantage is given special treatment, omitted from the transparency requirements of today’s legislation. Charging over $1,500 more per person each year than would have otherwise been spent if the patient were in Traditional Medicare, private insurers are making huge profits off MA. This bill continues to advantage private insurance executives over disadvantaged health care consumers and taxpayers.

And this legislation completely ignores the growing impact of private equity with its rapid takeover of many health care sectors, often resulting in soaring costs and worsening health inequities. Despite modest, bipartisan, unanimous approval of measures to address both Medicare Advantage and private equity in another committee, today’s legislation is silent.
Transparency can lead to better oversight, but only if it is targeted toward the right information and the right actors and is paired with enforcement. Unfortunately, this markup misses the mark in addressing these issues and offers very little toward lowering outrageous prices.

Nor does this legislation do anything to provide better transparency into the pharmaceutical industry, let alone
reduce price gouging or even record the enormous contributions taxpayers make as angel investors in research and development, American taxpayers—the single largest contributors to pharma R&D in the world.

We all want to encourage cures and treatments for dreaded diseases long before we or a loved one face a troubling diagnosis. But pharmaceutical monopolies and oligopolies have been more concerned with manipulating the system to delay competitors and extract the highest prices the sick and dying will pay rather than create more innovative treatments.

Over a decade (2005-15), 78% of new drug patents were not for the new cures we need, but were small modifications to existing drugs designed to extend monopoly power and monopoly prices. By one new estimate, about $40 billion in taxpayer dollars were wasted in 2019 alone on drugs that violated antitrust laws when delaying competitors.

30% percent of adults report not picking up prescriptions or skipping doses because they could not afford their medications. Yet nothing in this bill concerning Big Pharma.

Nothing to help the half of Americans who cannot afford a $500 medical emergency, but will likely be charged thousands if they receive a dreaded diagnosis, suffer a heart attack, or are in a horrific car accident. Unlike shopping for most consumer products, health care is absolutely essential. Patients do not have a choice, yet they are forced to navigate a complex system and are charged outrageous prices by a highly consolidated and broken market.

While consumers get sticker shock and medical debt, corporate interests get a shield from meaningful action. Moving forward, we need bipartisan action to lower prices, not just bigger font when prices are disclosed.