Pro-Consumer Health Bills Ready for Senate Action

The House of Representatives last year passed and teed up for Senate action three patient-friendly health reform bills—more progress than has been made on pro-consumer health measures since Sen. John McCain’s famous “thumbs down” stalled action for more than five years.

• By a big 320-71 bipartisan vote in mid-December, the House passed The Lower Cost, More Transparency Act that requires hospitals, health insurers, labs, and other providers to make accurate, accessible price information available to patients and consumers.  It also addresses the obfuscation of drug prices by pharmacy benefit managers that can inflate prices and co-payments for patients, and it would lower out-of-pocket costs for seniors who receive outpatient medications in a hospital-owned facility.
  
  
• In June, the House passed a companion bill, the CHOICE Arrangements Act, to expand affordable and flexible health coverage options, including codifying and expanding Association Health Plans and Health Reimbursement Arrangements.  It is designed to give small businesses more options in providing health coverage and employees more flexibility in how they spend their tax-preferred health coverage dollars.
  
  
• And before adjourning for Christmas, the House reauthorized opioid treatment and prevention programs through the SUPPORT Act.  The bill (The Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2023) gives states the option of providing Medicaid patients who have substance use disorder up to one month of treatment in a mental hospital. It is long past time to reform the nearly 60-year-old rule that ended hospital care for most mental health patients, ultimately sending them to the streets, jail, or worse.

The bills have bi-partisan support and await Senate action. These are important milestones toward patient-focused health care and are the product of intense negotiations by the House Ways & Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and the Workforce committees.

Dozens of members began work in 2020 to set out an agenda for health reform and engage members in the details of policymaking. They worked together through the Republicans’ Healthy Futures task forces toward the overall goal of giving people access to choices of more affordable health coverage and care in a revived market catering to their needs and preferences.

During most of last year, health reform had moved off center stage, allowing Congress to consider, outside the political spotlight, a series of bills that can lead to meaningful change and have better chances of success because of their bipartisan support.

Importantly, all went through the normal legislative process, starting with subcommittee hearings to vet the details of the bills, instead of being jammed into a huge, clumsy, opaque “omnibus” spending bill that no legislator has time to read or consider. The three bills each incorporate numerous targeted bills sponsored by individual members.

Each of the bills builds on Trump administration policies. President Trump signed the original substance abuse law in 2018 to address the nation’s opioid and mental health crises. The CHOICES and the Lower-Cost, More Transparency bills also would codify Trump policies implemented through administrative rulemaking.

So the House has made progress in 2023, teeing up measures that show a clear and pro-active health reform agenda for 2024 and beyond.

Grace-Marie Turner founded the Galen Institute to facilitate an informed debate over patient-centered health reform ideas. @gracemarietweet gracemarie@galen.org