Health Care

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I’ve always fought to protect the rights of every American to choose their doctor and get the treatment which works best for them and their family. Healthcare should be affordable, accessible, and free from bureaucratic government interference. I’ve worked for many years to roll back the massively wasteful Obamacare law, and was successful in leading the effort to get the Cadillac Tax repealed. I’ve fought to protect America’s status as the global leader in healthcare research and development, and work continuously to strengthen competition in the marketplace, ensuring innovative new technologies can make it to market as quickly as possible.

I’m proud to be a leader on the Healthy Futures Taskforce, a Republican-led initiative to solve the biggest problems in our healthcare system. Innovations like telehealth and wearable technology can transform the way Americans receive healthcare while saving them money. Too often government regulations prevent these things from seeing widespread use. Similarly, patients should be able to share their medical records with their doctors in a safe, confidential, and convenient way. To advance these goals, I’m leading on several efforts:

• H.R. 3173, the Protecting Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act, will ensure bureaucratic prior authorizations don’t stand between patients and their doctors.
• My amendment to repeal the long-standing ban on a unique patient identifier system will eliminate one of the primary barriers to modernizing how patient records are stored and transferred. We must ensure patient record management is brought into the 21^st Century by developing new secure ways to store and transmit data, and we must ensure patients have absolute control over who see their record and when.

We must also modernize how patients can see their doctors. Parents with young children, seniors with transportation difficulties, and veterans with disabilities are all examples of Americans who may struggle to see their doctor regularly. Telehealth opens new opportunities for doctors to treat patients where they live, allowing increased convenience for everyday Americans. Telehealth also promises to revolutionize how mental health and substance abuse disorders are treated. However, government regulations have crippled the ability of doctors to provide these services to their patients. That why I’m proud to be a leader on H.R. 6202, the Telehealth Extension Act, which will lower barriers to telehealth access and ensure rural communities can benefit just as much as urban communities.

Finally, in my role on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, I have opportunities to fight to protect important programs like Medicare. Medicare is projected to be bankrupt by 2026, threatening either massive government bailouts or slashed benefits to seniors. I won’t let that happen, and am committed to protecting this important program for generations to come.