Subcommittee Chair Guthrie Opening Remarks at Health Markup of 21 Legislative Proposals (11.15.23)

Today's markup hearing builds off the months-long work this subcommittee has done to improve patient access to care by addressing costs, Medicare coverage policies, and provider sustainability. In July, we held our first provider-focused hearing. Recently held another legislative hearing building off what we learned in July. Separately, we also held hearings on driving innovation in Medicare. Our markup today includes bipartisan legislation that is designed to highlight three key areas of focus. Lowering costs of medicines for patients in Medicare Part D, improving access to innovation through policies focused on improving Medicare coverage processes, and preserving and improving access to care through policies dealing with lab and physician reimbursement issues. Many of the bills we're marking up today will come with a price tag. Some will be small, and others will be substantial. Some will even save the taxpayer and Medicare program money. In order to advance legislation through the full committee, and ultimately the House and Senate, it will need to be fully offset. And we are actively working to identify bipartisan offsets, and we'll fully offset each of these bills that is considered at the full committee. Lowering costs for Medicare Part D patients, we're turning to bills at hand. In Part D space, we have a number of policies that address high drug costs in the market-driven manner, opposed to those of the other policies moving forward. This includes bipartisan legislation from Dr. Joyce and Mr. Peters to help drive biosimilar access and legislation for Mr. Carter to dealing PBM compensation from the list price of the drug. Additionally, we have legislation to reduce the fees pharmacists pay to PBMs for drugs long after a sale is made, and to increase transparency and predictability for pharmacists with respect to the quality measures which are evaluated. Finally, there's legislation that will ensure patients aren't paying more for a drug out-of-pocket than what their prescription drug plan paid for the drug. This is critical in light of the work the GAO did several weeks ago to highlight the high out-of-pocket costs paid by Medicare beneficiaries for highly rebated drugs under Part D. Beyond lowering drug costs for seniors, we're also working to enhance their access to services and providers by making sure that payments to doctors can sustain the independent practice of medicine, and that the rules that determine coverage enhance, not enhance, not restrict patient access to the most up-to-date best technology our health care system has to offer. Fortunately, we have a number of physicians on both sides of the dais in this subcommittee who can attest to these challenges. I want to thank everyone who has shown thought leadership on these issues, like Dr. Bichon, Burgess, Joyce Dunn, and Miller Meeks, to name a few, and to say nothing of our resident pharmacist representatives Carter and Harshberger, who have helped bring important pharmacy issues to the forefront of this committee. Among these bills considered today are H.R. 6364 from Representative Balderson, that ensures health care providers don't have to disclose home addresses as their office address if they're delivering telehealth from their home. H.R. 1352 from Representative Hudson, that will test policies on increasing access to biosimilars. H.R. 1691, which will codify the Trump-era MSIT rule and provide automated Medicare coverage for four years for FDA-approved breakthrough technologies. I know it's important to the ranking member and myself. We have a number of bills, including H.R. 5389, the National Coverage Determination Transparency Act. In closing, the bills before us today represent reasonable bipartisan reforms to the Medicare program that will ensure Medicare can meet the evolving needs of beneficiaries and providers. I thank my colleagues for their hard work on these bills, and I look forward to discussion today. I yield back and recognize the ranking member for her opening statement.