Tag: unveils

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, on Wednesday unveiled a lengthy report that he says serves as a “roadmap” to “Make America Healthy Again” and points to how the flawed American healthcare system impacts “national defense.” 

The 47-page report – titled “The Case for Healthcare Freedom” – is a “painstakingly researched” summary of “America’s health crisis and how to address it,” Roy said.

Its findings include that U.S. healthcare spending had reached $4.9 trillion in 2023. 

As a share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), health spending accounted for 17.6%, and costs are growing around 1% faster than the annual GDP, the report says.

The report argues that “if conservatives care about a strong national defense and low taxes, these trends have to be reversed.” 

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“The Case for Healthcare Freedom lays out a detailed roadmap for how Congressional Republicans can help President Trump deliver on the promise to address America’s health crisis,” Roy said in a statement. “The problem isn’t just health insurance, or Big Pharma, or food additives that are making us unhealthy; it’s the fact that politicians, bureaucrats and corporations are all benefitting from a broken, cronyistic system that lets them put profits over patients with impunity.” 

Roy argued that right now, Congress has “a tremendous opportunity to put American healthcare back on track by embracing the empowerment of patients and doctors through the promotion of expansive health savings accounts in the budget reconciliation process, and we need to take full advantage.” The congressman went on to say, “giving the same actors more power and money won’t work; if we want to Make America Healthy Again, the answer is healthcare freedom. If we want to control our budgets and healthcare spending, the answer is healthcare freedom.”

The wide-ranging report comes just two days after President Donald Trump was sworn into a second term. The pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” became a focal point of Trump’s campaign when Democrat turned Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race and backed him. Trump tapped Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, but his confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled. 

The report includes criticism of the program providing food welfare assistance for low-income households. 

Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends Donald Trump’s inauguration in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025.  (Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)

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“While chronic food illness kills up to 678,000 Americans per year, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will likely pay over $250 billion on junk food for the next 10 years,” Roy’s office notes.

The report also targets the coveted weight loss and diabetes drugs championed as “miracle medication,” which has even used by celebrities to drop pounds in recent months. It found the Danish pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, “spent at least $25.8 million over the past decade on U.S. medical professionals to promote two of its obesity drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda.”

The report assesses that families and their employers on average in 2024 spent $25,000 annually, or nearly the cost of a company car, for health insurance, and that’s despite “the false promise of Obamacare to lower premiums by $2,500 a year.” The cost of premiums has increased at least 100% since 2010, according to the report. 

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it at an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.  (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

“Obamacare has made healthcare so expensive that it now subsidizes households earning up to $600,000 per year for their health insurance,” the report says.

In 2024, the report found, four of the top five American industries by revenue were healthcare-related. Those were hospitals, which came in first; drug, cosmetics and toiletry wholesaling, which came second; health insurance, which earned the third place slot; and pharmaceutical wholesaling, which came in fifth. 

The report also discusses how 47% of hospital cash prices are lower than the insurer-negotiated price “that people pay hundreds of dollars a month for the privilege of having.” 

The report argues multiple insurance companies, including UnitedHealth, Anthem/Elevance, and Humana, “earn” a majority of their revenue from taxpayers.

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“We do not have a free market in the healthcare system. The government controls more than 80% of health spending,” according to a summary of the report provided by Roy’s office. “The Left’s solution to fix our healthcare system is spending even more money and giving the government even further control over the healthcare system. ‘Medicare for All’ would cost an additional $33 trillion over 10 years, and it would leave 70% of Americans financially worse off.”