Ranking Member Steve Womack (R-AR) Opening Remarks at Hearing on Health and Human Services Budget Request

(As Prepared for Delivery)

Thank you, Chairman Yarmuth, and thank you, Deputy Secretary Hargan, for joining us.

Today, we’re here to examine the President’s budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services for fiscal year 2020.

This is an important conversation. Your agency is responsible for administering programs on which millions of Americans rely – including Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and Head Start. Further, your agency is at the forefront of combatting some of our country’s biggest health crises, including the opioid epidemic, which claims the lives of 115 Americans each day.

Your agency also faces several budgetary challenges that must be addressed.

Health care spending is growing faster than any other sector of the economy. In 2017, the U.S. spent $3.5 trillion on health care. By 2027 health care spending is projected to reach nearly $6 trillion – just under 20 percent of America’s GDP – according to a recent report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Actuary.

This growth in spending has been caused by several factors that require our attention in Congress.

First, the cost of care is increasing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, the price of hospital services increased by 3.7 percent and the price of medical care increased by 2 percent – both of which were higher than the rate of inflation that same year.

Second, Americans are living longer. Thanks to advancements in modern medicine, average life expectancy has increased by more than 9 years since Medicare was created in 1965 and is projected to continue increasing. That’s good news – but it does have an impact on growing health care spending.

Finally, the ratio of retirees to workers is shrinking with an average of 10,000 baby boomers leaving the workforce every day.

Unfortunately, the laws governing how our health care programs work do not reflect the dynamics we’re facing today.

As a result, there is increasing pressure on programs like Medicare, which today provides care to approximately 15 percent of our population.

For example, Medicare Part A – which covers inpatient hospital care, skilled nursing facilities, hospice, and lab tests – is expected to be insolvent by 2026, threatening the health benefits many people expect to receive in the future.

2026. That is only eight years away.

Congress and the administration, together, have a shared responsibility to address these challenges and put our health care spending back on a sustainable path.

That requires taking a hard look at what’s working and what’s not. It requires the courage to make tough choices that preserve and strengthen programs for Americans today and in the future.

The President’s budget takes important steps to do just that, investing in the long-term health of the American people while also advancing proposals that will help rein in health care spending.

For example, the President’s budget continues historic funding to fight the opioid epidemic by expanding access to prevention, treatment, support services, and research. This includes efforts to prevent improper or abusive prescription practices that have dangerously and unnecessarily exposed patients to opioids.

It also aims to dramatically decrease the number of people affected by HIV, with the goal of reducing new infections by 90 percent within a decade.

At the same time, the budget includes several commonsense reforms that have been proposed by Republicans and Democrats to make Medicare work better for patients by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse; increasing competition; and lowering drug prices and out-of-pocket costs.

All told, these efforts achieve roughly $1 trillion of savings in mandatory spending. That’s important progress. But with $22 trillion in debt and annual deficits nearly $1 trillion, there is much more work to do.

As I’ve said before, mandatory spending accounts for 70 percent of all federal spending today and will rise to 78 percent by 2029.

Until we make structural reforms to mandatory spending programs like Medicare, discretionary spending – including funds for defense and border security – will continue to be squeezed out, and Congress will continue to have the same battles year after year over what programs to fund and how to handle our debt.

I’m fearful that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may double down on this approach, proposing ideas that will make our nation’s grim fiscal reality even worse.

We have already seen a proposal that would radically disrupt our health care system, adding trillions of dollars to our national debt while eliminating patients’ choice and raising taxes – and there’s no plan to pay for it.

We have a responsibility to put forward serious solutions – not catchy slogans – to improve our health care system and rein in spending.

I look forward to hearing more from Deputy Secretary Hargan as we work through these questions in Congress.

With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you again, and I yield back.