Greg Walden: “Let me just say a couple of things. One, I represent a very rural district in Oregon. It is two-thirds of the landmass…”

“Let me just say a couple of things. One, I represent a very rural district in Oregon. It is two-thirds of the landmass of the State. We suffer a lot of these same issues: low income, high levels of poverty, and the need for basic services. Mr. Chairman, that is why I worry a lot about making sure our community health centers get funded. I think you know this. They run out of funding in just a matter of months. The National Health Service Corps, same thing. By the end of September, I think they run out of money. I have a number of Indian reservations. Native Americans. Their Special Diabetes Program runs out of money. The teaching health centers run out of money. Yes, today we are pouring money into a program that some of our Nation's leading editorial writers have called susceptible to scam artists and corruption and that spends $2.7 million to sign up 314 people. That doesn't seem like a very good expenditure to me. I would rather put that money into our community health centers and into some of these other proven programs that work. I think it is fine to do outreach, certainly, and to expand education. I do wish it were more fulsome. I wish there weren't a gag restriction on our navigators so that they can't talk about other insurance alternatives that our States have pioneered and regulate, that even the Obama administration approved these short-term plans; yet derided today, these were approved, in many cases, under the last administration.…”