Phil Roe

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize April 3- 7 as National Retirement Planning Week. Saving for retirement is one of the most important steps that Americans can take to build a better future for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, all too often, saving for retirement remains a distant goal that is put off in exchange for more immediate needs. The Government Accountability Office reports that 29 percent of Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings, and no traditional pension. With this in mind, it must be a national priority for us to communicate the importance of retirement planning. By encouraging more Americans to adequately prepare for their retirement years, we can significantly enhance retirement security in the United States. Recognizing this week as National Retirement Planning Week is an important step to help raise awareness of this need, and I commend the members of the National Retirement Planning Coalition for their efforts to educate Americans about the importance of retirement planning. I wish them all the best as they continue this valued campaign.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Self-Insurance Protection Act, H.R. 1304. Mr. Speaker, I find it hardly plausible you could make something worse where one-third of the counties in my district have no option to buy any insurance on the exchange, and the third largest county in the State of Tennessee has no option. So I would beg to differ, Mr. Speaker. We all want to ensure workers have access to high-quality, affordable health coverage. That is exactly what this legislation is all about. Self-insured plans offer high-quality healthcare coverage at a reasonable cost for workers. This popular option allows employers to pay their employees' healthcare costs directly and, if costs are lower than expected, those savings can be reserved for later years to help cover their workers' future healthcare costs. One of the benefits to self-insurance is that employers have more flexibility to customize their healthcare plans as they see fit for the unique needs of their employees. These plans are also free from many of the restrictive requirements associated with traditional healthcare plans, requirements that limit choices and force employees to purchase specific benefits they may not want or need. As healthcare costs have risen, many employers have turned to this cost-effective model. In fact, in 2016, more than 60 percent of all employers offering health insurance coverage were self-insured, of the 160 million or so people in this country that have insurance through their job. Even the labor unions have embraced this approach. However, employers may also take greater financial risk when providing this popular option to workers. To help mitigate that risk, many employers opt to purchase stop-loss insurance. Stop-loss insurance is not health insurance, nor has it ever been considered health insurance under Federal law. It does not process medical claims, and it does not perform any other traditional function of health insurance. What it does instead is provide employers choosing to provide self-insurance with a financial backstop, protecting the benefits of workers and their families. Unfortunately, the former administration threatened to regulate stop- loss insurance as traditional health insurance, a move that would put workers and their families at risk of losing access to the self-insured market. While we now have a new administration that understands the importance of providing more pathways to affordable healthcare coverage, Congress must also act to ensure that no future administration will be able to restrict the self-insurance option. The Self-Insurance Protection Act does just that. This legislation reaffirms longstanding policies, prevents future bureaucratic overreach, and clarifies once and for all that stop-loss insurance is not health insurance. By supporting H.R. 1304, we will promote more choices and protect access to affordable healthcare coverage options for families. Let me put this all in English. I was the mayor of Johnson City, Tennessee, where we had a self-insured plan for the teachers and for the workers there at the city. The city provided an opportunity for people to have health insurance for their families. We would accept risks up to $250,000, and then we bought policies to protect the taxpayers and the city from any costs that went above that. What this plan also allowed us to do is put in incredibly innovative health prevention, things like wellness programs, smoking cessation, weight loss, diabetes screening, lowering cholesterol. We put all those things in that plan, which helped hold--even with insurance premiums going up, we were able to level insurance costs going up and, therefore, save the employees and the teachers money in that community. That is all it is. Everybody buys insurance in this country to mitigate risk. When you by homeowners insurance, you say: I will have $1,000 deductible. So if I have a roof blow off, I can stand to pay $1,000, but my insurance covers the rest. That is all this is. It just protects risk. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1304.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Ranking Member Walz, for his kind words and his hard work on this legislation also. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the vice chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to thank the majority and the minority staff that worked on this bill, and certainly the Senate, Senators Tester and Isakson, and the committee on the Senate side for getting this over here in a timely way. We needed to do this now so that we could continue care for patients that would go past August 7. We have people right now who are getting care that is going to be long term, and they would be cut off or couldn't use the Choice program. We have heard a lot of the problems with Choice here, but it has also helped a lot of veterans. What we feel like we want the opportunity to do now is be given a little bit of time, in a bipartisan way, to work out the problems with this. I think this goes for everyone on our committee: At the end of the day, our purpose, our goal is to provide access and the best quality of care for veterans that this country can deliver. That is the goal of our committee in a bipartisan way. With that, once again, I encourage all of my Members to support this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise today in support of S. 544. Congress created the Choice Program in 2014 to ensure that veterans waiting in line at the Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities across the country had an option of seeking care in their communities. Though Choice is far from perfect, 3 years later, more than a million veterans have used it to get care they needed faster and closer to home. Choice has also led to a nationwide conversation about the importance of the VA healthcare system, the need for VA to be a better partner to community providers and hospitals everywhere, and the actions we must take to ensure that VA is well positioned to provide high-quality care to veterans for generations to come. As chairman, I am wholeheartedly committed to seeing that conversation through to a solution. We are currently refining legislation that will provide a long-term path to make the VA healthcare system and VA's care in the community programs, including Choice, work better for veterans, for VA, for community providers, and for taxpayers alike. Our goal is to have that solution on the President's desk later this year. However, Choice is expected to sunset just four short months from now on August 7, 2017. And when it does, the VA expects to have anywhere from $800 million to $1.2 billion left in the Choice fund. Absent enactment of this bill or legislation like it, on August 8, those funds will no longer be available to help veterans get the care they need, with potentially tragic consequences. During a full committee hearing last month, Secretary Shulkin testified: ``Without congressional action, veterans will have to face longer wait times for care.'' He went on to say that allowing Choice to sunset would be ``a disaster for American veterans.'' With the passage of this bill today, we can get one step closer to avoiding that disaster. In anticipation of the program's expiration, VA has already started halting referrals to Choice for services, like maternity care and oncology care that typically require lengthy episodes of care. That means that veterans with cancer or veterans who are pregnant can no longer choose to take advantage of Choice care if they live far away from a VA medical facility or have to wait more than 30 days for the next VA appointment. As if that wasn't bad enough, if Choice is not extended by the end of April, VA will have to stop sending referrals to Choice for many other services that veterans are relying on. To prevent this, S. 544 would remove the August 7, 2017, sunset date from the Choice program. This will allow the program to continue working for veteran patients until all the money remaining in the veterans Choice fund--the money that Congress provided 3 years ago for this exact purpose--is fully expended. It would also ensure that, as we move forward with ongoing efforts to create an enduring solution to the problems VA is facing, veterans are not cut off from potentially lifesaving or life-preserving care. The bill would also eliminate the requirement for VA to act as the secondary payor for nonservice-connected care provided under Choice. This would bring Choice in line with VA's other care in the community programs and remove a pain point that, while well-intentioned, has impeded the provision of care for certain patients and challenged VA's ability to issue reimbursements to community providers in a timely consistent manner. In addition, the bill would authorize VA to share medical record information with community providers who are jointly treating veteran patients. This would ensure that the clinicians caring for veterans, both in VA and community medical facilities, have all the information that they need to make well-informed treatment plans and provide the highest quality care. Subsequent redisclosure of medical records information would be prohibited, meaning that personal patient information would be safeguarded from inappropriate disclosures. As chairman, as a veteran, and as a doctor, I cannot think of anything more important that we can do today to help our Nation's veterans and pass this legislation out of the House of Representatives and swiftly deliver it to the President's desk for his signature. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in doing that by supporting this bill today. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman), my good friend, a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army, twice deployed to Iraq, and a very active member of the committee.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and add extraneous material into the Record.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I look forward to working with Ranking Member Walz and our fellow committee members to strike the appropriate balance between ensuring protections that are in place to provide provider agreement authority from being unfairly utilized and reducing administrative burdens on small providers. However, absent passage of this legislation today, veterans with serious need will not be able to get the care they need. Already, veterans who are pregnant or who have been diagnosed with cancer have been unable to take advantage of the increased access to care that the Choice Program provides. I would also note that, since Choice granted VA provider agreement authority in the Choice Act 3 years ago, the committee has not heard a single instance where that authority has been improperly utilized or resulted in unfair labor practices. Furthermore, the exclusion afforded in the Choice Act is no more generous than providers under Medicare or in TRICARE currently enjoy, and there is no reason why providers accepting veteran patients should have to deal with more administrative burdens than providers under Medicare and TRICARE. I can assure you, as a Medicare provider and a TRICARE provider, that is enough burden. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Lance), my good friend and fellow classmate.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 544) to amend the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Costello), a former member and a very active member of our committee.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record two letters from the National Disabilities Rights Network and the National Rifle Association in support of H.R. 1181: National Rifle Association of America, Washington, DC, March 7, 2017. Dear Chairman Roe: I am pleased to write on behalf of the National Rifle Association in support of H.R. 1181, the ``Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act.'' This bill would address an ongoing problem over the past 12 years in which veterans and veterans' family members for whom fiduciaries have been appointed by the Department of Veterans Affairs are deemed to have been ``adjudicated as . . . mental defective[s]'' and prohibited from possessing or receiving firearms. Such an appointment is not necessarily based on any finding that the veteran is a danger to himself or herself or to others. Fortunately, the NICS Improvement Amendment Act of 2007 provided these individuals with the opportunity to seek relief from that legal disability. However, your bill goes one step further in protecting the rights of veterans and family members, by ensuring that no VA proceeding going forward will prevent a person from exercising his or her Second Amendment rights unless a judicial authority has found that the person's mental incapacity or disorder actually makes him or her dangerous. We wish you success in moving forward with this important protection for the rights of those who have served our country. Please don't hesitate to call me. Sincerely, Jason M. Quimet, Director of Federal Affairs.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1101, the Small Business Health Fairness Act, sponsored by my good friend and true American hero, Sam Johnson. I encourage all of my colleagues to do the same. This bill is an important tool to help empower small businesses to offer more affordable healthcare options to their employees. Mr. Speaker, as a former small-business owner myself, I know that most small-business owners want to do the right thing and offer health insurance to their employees. We did so in my practice. But many of these businesses are struggling with the cost and complexities of offering health insurance to their employees. ObamaCare has exacerbated this problem for small businesses. Thousands of jobs and thousands of small businesses have closed. We have a better way. We are going to start by passing the American Health Care Act, which will repeal many of ObamaCare's taxes and mandates and replace it with free market reforms. But there is much more that can be done. Perhaps the only thing that has prevented ObamaCare from causing even more widespread damage was the success of ERISA, employer-sponsored health insurance. We believe small businesses deserve the same protections that large businesses do, and that is why we are passing this legislation today. The Small Business Health Fairness Act takes positive steps toward creating a more competitive healthcare marketplace, lowering insurance costs for many small employers. Mr. Speaker, why would anybody care if association health plans got together and allowed me to purchase insurance across a State line? I have a community in my district where the State line on one side of the street is Bristol, Virginia, on the other side is Bristol, Tennessee. Why would it matter? Why couldn't I purchase that insurance across the State line if it helped my employees and lowered costs? And, by the way, Mr. Speaker, the Affordable Care Act is working so well for consumers that 18 out of 23 of the co-ops went broke, leaving hundreds of thousands of people to search for insurance coverage. For the past 8 years, House Republicans have engaged the administration and encouraged them to work with us to implement a more patient-centered healthcare system; but, instead of working with us on a common goal, they have layered on additional costs for small businesses. I again want to encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 1101.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a fellow classmate.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Banks), a new member of our committee who is also in the Reserves serving our Nation in the military.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chair, I would like to inquire as to the balance of my time.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), a good friend and long-term member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, I think my good friend, Mr. Walz, helps make the point that this person who was aggrieved, it doesn't have to last so long. You can actually compress this time. As I mentioned, it is not short; 3 months to get this resolved. But this process we are putting together actually helps that person that has been aggrieved by the supervisor, I would argue. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Dunn), a new member of our committee, a veteran and physician from Florida.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Chairman, also during that live Facebook page, I mentioned another person I wouldn't mind riding across the country with, and it was Mr. Hoyer, just to clarify the Record. Mr. Chairman, just a couple of clarification things. All we have done with this bill is--we haven't removed due process rights--we have just shortened the time. And to show the concern that I had, I was afraid that if we used 14 or 15 calendar days--let's say, President's Day would be on a Monday, which would be a holiday--that would take a day away. So I said let's make this first part of this 15 business days. So that is 3 weeks. And then the accelerated review can go on 45 business days, which is 9 weeks. So this is 3 months of time, not a full year. But it simply compresses that time into a 3-month timeframe that this could last. So I think that people have their due process rights protected. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), my good friend, vice chair of our committee.

Mr. ROE of Tennessee

Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 198, I call up the bill (H.R. 1181) to amend title 38, United States Code, to clarify the conditions under which certain persons may be treated as adjudicated mentally incompetent for certain purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.