Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the House has passed this bill before, making clarifications on existing religious exemptions for healthcare. I understand that religious groups have important healthcare concerns that should be taken seriously. While I support this bill, we should be talking about issues in healthcare that our constituents bring up every day: skyrocketing prescription drug costs, increasing premiums, and threats to guaranteed coverage. I just wanted to make those points, never losing the opportunity. This bill is pretty simple, Mr. Speaker. Right now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, has an advisory panel for hospital outpatient issues that is comprised of outside experts. The problem is this panel does not include representation for an ambulatory surgical center, or ASC, in its membership, despite the panel counseling on Medicare or ASC payment issues. This legislation would require the addition of someone from ASC on the advisory panel on hospital outpatient concerns. Given that Medicare pays ASCs more than $4 billion a year through the outpatient payment rule, it just makes sense that ASCs be represented on this panel. The bill requires more transparency in determining what types of surgeries are safe to perform on an outpatient basis. More than 3 million Medicare beneficiaries receive care at an ASC for cataract surgery and other surgeries.…”