A House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing turned explosive as members of Congress debated ways to root out fraud, waste, and abuse to make the health care system more affordable.
Lawmakers discussed a number of President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) priorities, including health care price transparency and reducing waste through programs that are not delivering on their core missions, like the 340B program that the Washington Reporter has covered extensively.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), the Chairman of the Health Subcommittee, summed up a key issues, noting that when it comes to programs like 340B, “visibility has become limited into how the program’s generated discounts are used and whether those savings are reaching the patients that they were meant to reach.”
Elizabeth Mitchell, one of the witnesses, is the president and CEO of Purchaser Business Group on Health. She told the committee’s Vice Chair, Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R., Tenn.), that “the 340B program was intended to support safety net hospitals. But it has expanded beyond its original intent, and we do believe it’s driving up costs in the commercial market, as well as for public payers.”
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D., Texas) suggested the real problem behind health care affordability and access to care was not waste, fraud, and abuse, but was instead “the Trump administration’s immigration policies.”
Watchdog groups and consumer protection organizations also highlighted waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system around the hearing.
Save Our States, a watchdog group, handed out satirical pamphlets on Capitol Hill highlighting “The Top 5 Nonprofit Hospital Art Museums you won’t want to miss!” The group spotlighted expansive art museums and luxury collections housed within tax exempt hospitals. The brochure is a part of Save Our States’ larger “HealthcareBetrayal.com” campaign, which criticizes hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Miami hospital for taking taxpayer dollars and “betraying” their patients by using the benefits on things like executive salaries and glamorous overseas facilities while “failing at basic healthcare.”
Consumers Research Executive Director Will Hild wrote a letter to the committee “highlighting real concerns about how nonprofit hospital systems across the country are STILL using federal funding streams and taxpayer-sponsored resources to push the woke agenda.” Hild’s Consumers Research has previously highlighted hospitals like Cleveland Clinic, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Henry Ford hospital in Michigan for “prioritizing political ideology over patients” as part of a larger “bad medicine” campaign.
In the letter, Hild and Consumers Research highlighted two prominent examples of waste that were backed by taxpayer dollars. First, the University of California San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital hosts a “Child and Adolescent Gender Center” which offers “medical and psychological care, advocacy and legal support to support transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse children.”
The other example noted how Kaiser Permanente prioritizes “health equity, inclusion, and belonging,” stating it strives for inclusion for all, and “equitable care.” The system runs a facility for black patients called the Center for Black Health and Wellness.
The Trump administration has signaled a desire to target wasteful programs throughout the health care system, whether it’s Medicaid fraud in Minnesota, or hospitals taking billions through a questionable “non-profit” status, and health policy experts expect this to be a key priority of Vice President JD Vance in his new role as fraud czar.
