Mr. President, I'm a physician. I used to work in a hospital for the working uninsured and the uninsured, the poorly insured. And so, as you might guess, I'm very sensitive to the idea to the understanding to the fact that healthcare is becoming more expensive,
less obtainable to the American people. Uh, and and last week, if I can put this up, I pointed out that the average American household has $10,000 in credit card debt. And these aren't people paying it off
every month. These are people, Mr. President, like in the state of Tennessee or the state of Louisiana, who are carrying a balance. And over the last five years, the to show that this is getting a an increasing problem, the average, if I
remember correctly, the average percent of someone's income going to credit card interest has risen from 1.9 to 3.2% of their income. They're not paying this off. They're carrying a balance, 22%
interest sometimes, and they're paying more and more. And the way this factors into health care is that when someone has a multi,000 deductible, even if they have insurance, they have a multi,000 deductible in order to pay for the out
of pocket, they're putting it on their credit card. So much so that over 60% of personal bankruptcies relate in part to health care expenses. Uh, period. credit card debt reflecting
the overall debt burden, the overall problems with affordability in our society is huge. Now, Mr. President, we got an obligation. We in Congress, whatever our party working with the president, we all have a mutual
obligation to address this issue. And now I'd like to stress that it is not just for the patient if you will, the family, the the the the individual, the employee, you name how you want to put it to address this, but it also is
important for businesses. Um I had a town hall a couple months ago back home or a round table and there's a woman named Debbie in for in Ditter, Louisiana in a coffee shop. She has 50 employees. No, at 50 employees, she'll have to provide
insurance. And so, she's having a difficult time expanding her business because then she has to provide coverage to more employees and she cannot afford to expand because of the money that she's putting towards her benefits.
Now, we need business to be strong. We need businesses creating more jobs, paying better wages for the people of the United States. By the way, that's not a Republican or a Democrat or congressional or executive office. that is an American priority for our fellow
Americans. So, one thing that's kind of lost is the ability to hire new employees or I should say more employees and the ability to pay them more is getting swallowed up
by the increased percent of compensation to an employee that's going to provide health insurance. To give a little bit more background, whenever a person whenever a business owner makes a decision to hire an employee, the amount they set aside for
that employee is the wage, the social security tax they pay upon those wages on behalf of the employee, and then their benefit package. The more that benefit package costs, the less they can employ, the less they can pay the employee. And right now we
are seeing the cost of health insurance climb to the extent that businesses are not able to pay more wages because they're having to put more into paying for the health insurance. This is not new. It's just getting worse. And we
spoke earlier to kind of feed back into the credit card debt. Businesses are compensating by buying the cheapest policy they can. Still more expensive but cheaper. But that cheaper policy has a deductible that is more and more. That
cheaper policy may have a deductible of $5,000. The average family carrying a $10,000 credit card debt doesn't have $5,000 to pay expenses. And that brings us back to where we started. They don't have it in their money. They don't have it in their
pocket. So, they're putting on their credit card. They're carrying the debt. and more and more of their income is going towards paying interest on rolled over credit card debt. By the way, big problem in my state of Louisiana, um I think we are the the state the number
three in the nation in terms of families carrying credit card debt. And if I remember correctly, 11% of families nationwide are going delinquent on their credit card debt, which means they're not even paying the minimal balance required. This is an issue for
Congress, whatever your party, for President Trump, to engage with each other to accomplish this mission. Now, by the way, we need the president. And I personally will make an appeal to President Trump.
Let's do something for the American people. You can say it's an election year. No, say it's not an election year. This is the year in which we've got to help the American people afford their household items. It's a huge issue. And the answer is, and President Trump's intuition on this is fantastic. During
the debate over extending the enhanced premium tax credits on the exchanges, President Trump said, "Don't give the money to the insurance company. Give the money to the family." Because if you give it to the insurance company, the insurance company takes 20% of it
for profit and overhead. So, and by the way, the family is still left with a multi,000 deductible. So, President Trump's intuition on this is the correct intuition. We need to make it
so that when we when the federal government is taking the money we're already using to subsidize the purchase of health insurance by employers and by the employee that the money is going to the patient, not to the insurance company. give the
patient the power, not the profit to the insurance company. And so I emphasize the president's intuition is correct because that opens the door for the president and for the Congress, no matter our party, to come together to
address this issue. By the way, you could say that it's good politics. I would say good policy is good politics. And so it' be important for us to consider to do this. Now I have, shout goodness, come up with a
plan. I call it the MVP plan. MVP, money and value for the patients. How do we do this? So again, taking the president's intuition, don't give the money to the insurance companies, give it to the patient. We advance the
dollars to the patient in a health savings account that they can use to pay for that out-of pocket expense. Under this plan, a family of four would get about $2,000. And by the way, there's a way to pay for this. This would not add to the nation's
debt because we already are subsidizing the purchase of health insurance by Americans. We just do it a little differently. And in this, you give $2,000 to the health savings account. Why is that important? 60% of American
families will not spend more than $2,000 in a calendar year on out-of- pocket expenses for healthcare. And once you take care of that first 2K, they can take a higher deductible
policy, which will lower the cost of the premium. Put together, this could save a family as much as $6,000 on health care on the cost of being insured. $6,000 a year, $500 a month.
This could help that family carrying a $10,000 load right now. Part of their credit card debt coming from the need to put credit put health care expenses on the card. This would help the employer because the employer could plausibly get
a policy which is less expensive which keeps more money in the employer's pocket better able to either hire more people or pay more compensation and it doesn't increase the nation's debt. We make it debt neutral and it builds upon the president's insight. You don't give
the money to the insurance company. You give it to the patient and you add value. So we bring money in with value to the patient. In the help committee right now, the committee I am privileged to be the chairman of, we have a bill bipartisan, Roger Marshall from Kansas,
John Hickin Looper from Colorado, our committee staff is working hard with them on this to increase price transparency. Now price transparency began with legislation and executive orders in the first Trump administration. I'm familiar with that. Part of it was the No Surprises Act
which I helped author and that began the process of price transparency. Price transparency just to be clear, we know what it means. Price transparency is knowing the price of something before you make the purchase as opposed to
making the price afterwards. I use the example uh in in the no surprises act we made it so that when you go in for a colonoscopy you they're obligated to tell you that if it's going to cost more than anticipated they have to tell you what that additional cost is going to be. I
chuckle because in the bad old days you'd find out that you're obligated to pay the extra cost for a colonoscopy when you're waiting to go back for the colonoscopy and you've been prepped and if you ever had one you know what that means. uh and you're sitting there with a thin sheet over you and they're
saying, "By the way, if you want to walk out, you can, but otherwise we're going forward. Just sign this sheet of paper." It was not a way to acquaint people with the price beforehand at a point in which they were prepared to walk away. Now, under the no surprises act, you
have to be informed. We're going to increase that. increase the power of price transparency so that the patient would know when she's going to go in how much it's going to cost beforehand as opposed to afterwards. We team this up. There's a
lot of applications being developed right now by the private sector taking the information we are creating to bring value to the patient. For example, I use the example of my daughter has an ear ache and uh I need to bring my daughter
to the hospital or to an urgent care center. You can take your phone say urgent care center near me. Which one has the lowest price? Is there any difference in quality? These apps will be able to give the patient, the mom,
the dad the information she or he needs right then as to which urgent care center is near them is open their cost for a routine visit or any other type of visit and the quality of the care. When you walk out, you can say, um,ies
near me, which has the best price for Bactrum DS? I forget the dose. I'm a doc. I haven't prescribed it for so long, but say 250 milligrams twice a day. And they're going to send you to the pharmacy with the best price. Now, you're paying for this
from the prefunded money in the health savings account. So you're bringing money in the pocket of the patient coupled with value proposition, price transparency and the apps being developed in the private sector for the patient. And the effect of this is to
take power from the insurance company, power from the middlemen and give it to the patients. Power to the patient, not profit to the insurer. Now we can do this. We can do this. But
it will take a commitment from Congress and from the president of the United States to do it. Now, first we got to care about it. We got to care that the families back home are paying who are carrying a balance of $10,000 in
the credit card. If we care about this, if the president of the United States cares about it, when I say we, I mean the Senate. I mean the House of Representatives. We can come together and fix it. Let's be constructive. Let's acknowledge that this is something that we have to do together. But first, we
have to care about it together. And just to point out that it's doable. Last year we prescribe earlier this year the president signed into law a PBM reform bill that Congress had negotiated
last Congress but got signed into law this Congress. President Trump's attempting to do this through Trump RX. Um uh the the the MVP plan would allow would allow could work with Trump RX to
give the patient the access to the better price. So Mr. President, ultimately we got to care. Ultimately, we have to make a decision as a Congress, as a government
to address the issue which is most pressing upon the American people, affordability. There's some things we can't touch. Housing, whatever solution we put in housing will not affect next year. The the price of gasoline and groceries, we cannot affect that as long as the
Iranians are holding the straight hormuz. That'll be up for the president to come up with an endgame that addresses that issue. But one thing that we can do collectively is to address the cost of being insured. And and some of
the things we do immediately when this happens will begin to decrease the amount of money a family puts in their personal budget out in the cost of healthcare.
Mr. President, get engaged. all of us but the president get engaged. We'll be held accountable by those families if we don't and by golly we should be.