Greg Walden

Mr. WALDEN

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I seek the time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I will try and make this fairly quick. I actually am going to oppose this amendment for this reason. Here we are going through trying to say to the health navigators, in amendment after amendment: Your job is to enroll people in health insurance. That is your job. And, by the way, we are going to have to pass a law that tells you to be sure and include a discussion about mental health, be sure and include and get educated on substance use disorder benefits. One after another, we are going through and putting in the statute all the things that ought to be, A, common sense and, B, ought to be part of an overall educational program for the navigators. And now recognizing, well, first of all, they are very expensive; second, there has been at least some level of questionable activity in the use of the taxpayer dollars; and, third, they don't know what they are doing, so we have got to instruct them via statute; now we are going to say: By the way, go do all these other things, too, that have nothing to do directly with enrolling people in the Affordable Care Act. So you are going to say, on the one hand: We don't think you are getting it right; we have got to give you more money. Now we are going to give you new duties that are kind of loosely described, if you ask me, to provide referrals to community-based organizations and address social needs related to health outcomes. That is all going to be in law now? Really? I think this whole program, the more I sit and listen to all the amendments that need to be put into law to change it--this was an ObamaCare creation, so I guess we are--I don't know. I wouldn't say you are sabotaging ObamaCare with this, but, certainly, you are changing ObamaCare and the navigators. We are looking at the costs, and, gosh, there is a lot we could do. I think the gentleman has 40 health centers in his district. And I assume he knows that I have got about 63 locations; and I assume the gentleman knows the money for those health centers runs out at the end of the fiscal year, and we have got to find a way to pay for that. I would rather put the money into that than into this program. So, Mr. Chairman, I am going to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats worked together on provisions to bring generic drugs to market faster and to stop abusive practices. We did that on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we brought this House multiple bills to achieve that goal, and we did it unanimously. We believe our bipartisan work will increase competition and ultimately help lower the cost of prescription drugs. These policies passed unanimously out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. They help consumers, and they have the added benefit of helping the Federal Government by producing $4 billion in savings. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, decided to pair these bipartisan bills to lower drug costs with what they knew were very partisan bills that I, frankly, think waste taxpayer money in many cases. We ought to be working together on this, not descending ``into partisan politics on a seemingly bipartisan issue.'' Those are the words of STAT News as reported today. The fact is, when we do work together, we can achieve real results. In the last Congress, we reauthorized the Food and Drug Administration, and we gave that agency the tools and resources to get generic drugs into market faster. It is already working. Our work produced, with the FDA's efforts, a record number of generic drugs coming to market, driving competition, and giving consumers more choices. We did the same thing in the prior Congress when Fred Upton and Diana DeGette led the effort on 21st Century Cures so we could invest in medical research. That was bipartisan. Unfortunately, today you have partisan bills coupled with bipartisan bills, a poison pill, if you will. And the Democrats have decided to use the money, in part generated by our work on generic drugs, to fund more navigators. Let me just talk briefly about navigators. They cost you an average of $767 every time they sign up an individual. In the private sector, it is $2.40. And they just added another $25 million to that. The Wall Street Journal reported one grantee took in $200,000 to enroll a grand total of one person. The top 10 most expensive navigators collected $2.77 million in contracts from the Federal Government. They signed up 314 people. That is how they spent the money. One newspaper editorialized: ``The navigator scheme is a make-work government jobs program rife with corruption and highly susceptible to scam artists.'' Today on the House floor, you will have a choice with this motion to recommit, and the choice is to spend it that way and add more money into that navigator program, that, by the way, we just approved a bunch of amendments to tell navigators to go work with people in rural areas, to work with people on CHIP, veterans. Apparently, they weren't working with any of those folks. So the motion to recommit says this: same drug bills that we passed out of committee, so you will be able to vote ``yes'' on those, and then the money that is generated, rather than going to this flawed navigator program will go to the NIH innovation fund to support childhood cancer research. That is your choice. By using the savings from the drug pricing provisions to pay for childhood cancer research, this amendment makes clear the bipartisan drug pricing offsets should be used to pay for bipartisan healthcare priorities. So, if you support lowering the cost of prescription drugs and you support the work of the NIH and its efforts to save countless lives of children with cancer, then you vote ``yes'' on the motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), America's only pharmacist in the U.S. House of Representatives and a distinguished gentleman from the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. WALDEN

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Austin Scott).

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire again about the amount of time on each side.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, at this point I would reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side, please.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, my friend from Oregon is right on the drug pieces, and like other Democrats I know, there are a lot of people who think that we should keep these bills separately and they would zoom on through here, but not package them up the way they are. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington State (Mrs. Rodgers).

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chair, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to reinforce what the gentleman from Wisconsin said. This is from The Washington Post: ``The Health 202: Democrats Are Putting a Political Pothole in the Way of Bipartisan Drug Pricing Bills.'' That is all you need to know. It didn't have to be this way. These bills came out of the committee individually. The Democratic leadership put them together knowing full well they could put a poison pill into a drug reform bill and delay consumers' ability to get more affordable drugs sooner, because this legislation could move through the Senate and down to the President much more quickly if it didn't have these provisions. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank the gentleman from Vermont for not only his comments here on the floor, but his comments publicly about what we agree with, which is these issues should have remained separate and not lumped together. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I will say that the State of Florida actually allows State-regulated plans to go up to 364 days to give Floridians an opportunity to have choice. When it comes to association health plans that allow small businesses like I used to own to get together and offer more affordable health insurance, they put a gag order on so that you can't tell America's patients they might have that option. So, Mr. Chairman, I don't know that I would fully trust all these navigators. According to The Wall Street Journal, one grantee took in $200,000 of your tax dollars and enrolled one person. The top 10 most expensive navigators collected $2.77 million to sign up 314 people. If you put that $2.77 million into our community health centers, as the Republicans would prefer, to spend that money, then you would cover 20,000 patients, according to one estimate. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman from Texas an additional 30 seconds.