View Leslie Dach’s Opening Remarks Here.
Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach is testifying in front of the Committee on Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing titled “Modernizing American Health Care: Creating Healthy Options and Better Incentives.” During his opening remarks, Dach emphasized the importance of protecting and expanding access to quality affordable, and equitable health care. At this moment, Republicans in Congress are writing a budget resolution to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires by cutting health care for millions of American families.
Read his full opening remarks below:
“Chairman Buchanan, Ranking Member Doggett, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Leslie Dach, and I am the Founder of Protect Our Care. Prior to founding Protect Our Care, I served as a Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and as the Department’s global Ebola coordinator. I also served in senior leadership at Walmart, where I became deeply familiar with purchasing health care for over 1 million employees of America’s largest private employer.
At Protect Our Care we believe that access to quality, affordable, and equitable health care is key to America’s health and the single most important prevention tool that we can provide this country.
American people agree. No matter where they live or work, or who they voted for, the American people want health care to be more affordable and accessible. About 80 percent of Americans believe the government spends “too little” or “about the right amount” on Medicare and Medicaid, including about 70%. Fewer than 1 in 5 think the government should spend less.
Yet, reconciliation proposals currently under consideration in Congress would increase health care costs and take away health coverage from millions, including our neighbors in nursing homes, children, individuals with disabilities, and people who take care of their children or elderly parents.
These cuts would devastate families in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and wealthy corporations and line the pockets of big drug companies. If lowering the deficit is the rationale the simplest and most popular solution would be to rein in these massive tax breaks
Proposals before Congress would cut over $2 trillion from Medicaid, which provides health care to over 72 million people including six in 10 nursing home residents, 30 million children, 15 million adults with disabilities, and 14 million adults with mental illness. Medicaid serves as a lifeline in rural communities, and cuts to Medicaid will wreak havoc on state budgets. Over 2 million Americans are covered by Medicaid just in the districts represented by the Republican members of this subcommittee. An overwhelming majority of Americans – including 69 percent of Trump voters – oppose cuts to Medicaid. 2 in 3 Americans say they personally know someone who benefits from it, including 38% of Trump voters who say that someone in their immediate family benefits from Medicaid.
If Congress takes away existing ACA tax credits, over 20 million Americans will pay an average of 90% more for their health care and 5 million people will lose their health insurance. 150 million Americans are also at risk of losing the free preventive services guaranteed by the ACA in the Braidwood case. And the promotion of junk plans and high-risk pools will hurt millions and gut protections for preexisting conditions.
Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prices and gutting the prescription drug savings in the Inflation Reduction Act would increase costs for over 53 million people while padding the profits of drug companies. This year alone, 11 million seniors are expected to save an average of $600 thanks to the annual cap on out-of-pocket drug costs. The newly negotiated lower drug prices will save seniors 1.5 billion out-of-pocket costs and taxpayers 6 billion dollars in the first year alone.
Congress is considering these proposals as the administration halts spending for community health centers, guts NIH biomedical funding, pushes out record numbers of government staff, and removes reliable scientific information from government websites. The chaos and withholding of funding has led to disruptions in care across the country as health centers close their doors and researchers pause clinical trials for patients. NIH is the envy of the world for the role it plays in developing cures for patients and the economic impact it generates. And the administration’s reckless attack on NIH will result in cures that we will never see and unnecessary deaths across the country in the world.
The attack on vaccines that are promised by RFK Junior if he is confirmed as HHS secretary will result in a resurgence of preventable diseases and cost lives. Vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles and tuberculosis are resurging across the country as the administration plans to gut the agencies that prevent and stop disease outbreaks and keep our food and drug supply safe.
Americans expect their leaders to lower costs, expand affordable health care, and protect public health, not to make health care more expensive and tear it away for millions of Americans.
Recently the press has reported that a number of Republicans in Congress are opposed to these cuts.
I hope we can work together to defeat Reckless proposals currently under consideration.”
