State Health Care Premium Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLER. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 1425.

While we can all agree that Americans pay too much for healthcare and that the rising costs of prescription drugs need to be addressed, this bill is not the answer.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected each of our communities in different ways. We need to remain focused on helping our constituents reopen their businesses, get back to work, and remain protected from the virus. This bill does none of these things.

Once again, we are wasting the American people's time debating something that will harm the healthcare system, move us toward socialized medicine, and provide fewer cures.

This is especially troubling as it is at odds with the Trump administration's steadfast goal of finding treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19, as well as protecting Americans from future pandemics.

Just like H.R. 3, this bill irresponsibly coerces drug manufacturers into negotiating drug prices with the government, slapping a 65 percent tax on revenue if they don't come to terms, which increases to as much as 95 percent.

In any negotiations that I have been part of, that is not how it works.

In fact, according to the analysis done by the Congressional Research Service, letting the government set drug prices would violate both the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause and the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause.

Before the pandemic, I traveled across Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District and met with patients and medical professionals, who have told me that the best way to address rising prescription drug costs include patent reform to get generics to market quickly, price transparency so consumers know the actual cost of the medication they are purchasing, and incentivizing innovation to help find new cures.

Rather than working toward fixing the disaster that has been brought about on the healthcare industry by ObamaCare, this bill expands its flawed structure and attempts to force non-Medicaid expansion States into complying with the radical fantasy that resembles socialized medicine.

There has been bipartisan work on healthcare reform, like H.R. 19, which Republicans put forward last year. If the majority were more interested in finding real results, they might have engaged with us in real discussions to find common ground. We are interested in lower prices, more cures, and a healthier healthcare marketplace.

Unfortunately, this legislation continues us down the wrong road. For these reasons, Madam Speaker, I oppose H.R. 1425 and urge all others to do so.

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