Date: 2015-03-26
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank the distinguished gentleman from Michigan and my friend from Texas. and what a celebration of Members coming together. Republicans and Democrats. Mr. Speaker. I stand on this floor to ensure and insist that I am here to protect seniors and to ensure that the vote taken today does not undermine the protection of Medicaid and Medicare. in particular Medicare for our seniors. and that any vote does not in any way hinder those and provide a burden for those who cannot pay. This provides a pathway for providing for our medical providers with the SGR fix. it provides seniors with quality healthcare services so they can go to the doctor they want. and. yes. it provides quality funding for our children and for our lowincome families. It supports our federally qualified health clinics. and coming from the city of Houston with the Texas Medical Center. there are a lot of doctors. Those doctors serve the poor and they serve seniors. and I want to make sure they are able to do so. The CHIP program will be protected that has been a vital program to provide for those families for our children to be healthy. Let me agree with my colleague. brother PASCRELL. this is good for America. I am delighted to support this. and we are going to help physicianowned hospitals and look forward to a better day. Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of H.R. 2. the "Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015." and the underlying bill. H.R. 2 repeals and replaces the Medicare Physician Payment System and incentivizes quality care for seniors. children and low incomefamilies. I thank Chairman RYAN and Ranking Member LEVIN for their work in shepherding this legislation. which enjoys bipartisan support to the floor. I support the bill before us because it protects our seniors. our children. lowincome families. and equitably compensates physicians who provide critically needed health services. This bipartisan legislation represents a significant achievement because it reforms Medicares payment system and maintains critical funding for health care for millions of seniors. lowincome children. and families. Compensating our medical providers adequately to enable them to continue providing much needed services to our seniors is a moral imperative. Assuring that our seniors receive quality health services is a moral imperative. Providing critical healthcare funding for children and low income families is also a moral imperative. Physicians from my congressional district in Texas. and others across the country. serve and provide remarkable healthcare to our seniors. children. and low income families. The 70.000 seniors in my congressional district are entitled to the security that comes from knowing that healthcare will be available to them when they need it the most. The 4.4 million low income families and children in the state of Texas and the 130.000 children in Harris County will benefit from this bill because it provides the resources needed to improve their quality of health. It is important that physicians who are willing to serve our seniors. children. and low income families not have to go broke doing so. Mr. Speaker. let me briefly list several of the more important aspects of this bill which I wholeheartedly support: For our seniors. the bill repeals the sustainable growth rate (also known as SGR) formula and phases in a value based payment system for physicians serving Medicare patients for the quality of care they provide. For our seniors. children and lowincome families. the new payment incentives in the bill encourage physicians to move towards alternative payment models such as bundled payment and shared savings which foster alignment of highquality and cost effective healthcare. This bill extends the Childrens Health Insurance Program. or CHIP. for two years. Over 928.000 children are in CHIP in Texas. and 130.000 in Harris County. will benefit from this bill. For our children. "clean" extensions in the bill maintain policies and funding that does not include detrimental policies or cuts. This funding supports evidencebased programs that have been proven to reduce health care costs. improve school readiness. and increase family selfsufficiency and economic security. This bill extends the Maternal. Infant. and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program for two years. This bill extends funding for 1.300 federally funded community health centers located in all 50 states. the District of Columbia. and six U.S. territories. distributed evenly between urban and rural areas. that serve 28 million patients. A third of those patients are children. and 93 percent of patients served have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. The vast majority of the 90 million patient visits to community health centers were for primary medical care. Without the funding. 7.4 million lowincome patientsincluding 4.3 million women provided by this bill would lose access to health care. This bill extends the Qualifying Individual Programwhich subsidizes Medicare premiums for lowincome beneficiariespermanently. This bill permanently corrects Medicare payments to physicians an provides muchneeded certainty and stability to the Medicare program. Importantly. the bill provides financial incentives to reinforce the countrys path toward a health care system that rewards value and quality of care. Mr. Speaker. this bipartisan legislation is a step in the right direction in Medicare payment reform and ensures continued funding that improves the health and welfare of millions of seniors. children. and families. H.R. 2 is important because it reforms our flawed Medicare physician payment system. incentivizes quality and value for our seniors. and extends coverage for our children and low income families. For all these reasons. I strongly support this bill and urge my colleagues to likewise.