Discussion · Senate
Roger Marshall Republican
“I want the Senate to pass our bill. It requires healthcare providers to show patients real prices before treatment, not months later. Knowing prices upfront will lower costs for families, employers, and the government.”
“Mr. President, thanks for letting us come to the floor, and I do appreciate my colleague Senator Bill Cassidy being here with me today as well. Could you imagine you are in the market and you need a new car, you need a new truck, and you really need it badly--you don’t have a way to get to and from work--so you get online and you look at the different models out there and be expected to make a purchase without knowing what the cost of that truck or that car was? Well, that is the way healthcare is right now. We expect consumers to have all the healthcare delivered to them, and months later they get a bill for it. We think that patients deserve pricetags just like consumers do in every other form of business. You think about the challenges of America today. Certainly the cost of living is upfront, and it is personal. And one of the big drivers of that cost is healthcare, health insurance. We have seen it go from 13 percent up to 18 percent of GDP. We have seen the cost of healthcare for a family go from maybe $500 a month a decade or two ago and now it is probably over $2,000 a month. So certainly the cost of healthcare, in so many ways, is driving inflation. This matters. It matters to the patients. It matters to the employers that are paying for the health insurance or a big portion of it. It matters to the Federal Government. If you are trying to balance the budget, if we could get the cost of healthcare under control, that would help us get toward a balanced budget. I mean, my goodness, it is a $7 trillion budget. Maybe $2 trillion, two-sevenths of our Federal budget, is on healthcare. So if there were more pricetags, it would help bring the cost of healthcare down; actually, about $1,000 a month. If patients had pricetags, it could bring down the cost of healthcare $1,000 a month. Our bill, as you may know, came out of committee 22 to 1, good bipartisan support. Our bill has real teeth to it as well. Our belief is just like in all forms of business, transparency helps consumers. And that is what we are asking here. We are not asking anything different than any other business. We want total transparency so patients can look at the different prices. A healthcare provider would have to give their cost upfront, not an estimate; a real price upfront as well. And, again, I just can’t emphasize enough that this is bipartisan. It is ready to move, and that this is so important to the American consumer. I will stop there, and I will yield to my colleague from Louisiana.”
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Mr. President, thanks for letting us come to the floor, and I do appreciate my colleague Senator Bill Cassidy being here with me today as well. Could you imagine you are in the market and you need a new car, you need a new truck, and you really need it badly--you don’t have a way to get to and from work--so you get online and you look at the different models out there and be expected to make a purchase without knowing what the cost of that truck or that car was? Well, that is the way healthcare is right now. We expect consumers to have all the healthcare delivered to them, and months later they get a bill for it. We think that patients deserve pricetags just like consumers do in every other form of business. You think about the challenges of America today. Certainly the cost of living is upfront, and it is personal. And one of the big drivers of that cost is healthcare, health insurance. We have seen it go from 13 percent up to 18 percent of GDP. We have seen the cost of healthcare for a family go from maybe $500 a month a decade or two ago and now it is probably over $2,000 a month. So certainly the cost of healthcare, in so many ways, is driving inflation. This matters. It matters to the patients. It matters to the employers that are paying for the health insurance or a big portion of it. It matters to the Federal Government. If you are trying to balance the budget, if we could get the cost of healthcare under control, that would help us get toward a balanced budget. I mean, my goodness, it is a $7 trillion budget. Maybe $2 trillion, two-sevenths of our Federal budget, is on healthcare. So if there were more pricetags, it would help bring the cost of healthcare down; actually, about $1,000 a month. If patients had pricetags, it could bring down the cost of healthcare $1,000 a month. Our bill, as you may know, came out of committee 22 to 1, good bipartisan support. Our bill has real teeth to it as well. Our belief is just like in all forms of business, transparency helps consumers. And that is what we are asking here. We are not asking anything different than any other business. We want total transparency so patients can look at the different prices. A healthcare provider would have to give their cost upfront, not an estimate; a real price upfront as well. And, again, I just can’t emphasize enough that this is bipartisan. It is ready to move, and that this is so important to the American consumer. I will stop there, and I will yield to my colleague from Louisiana.