▶ 0:17:27Chair Cassidy: I welcome everyone to the first health committee meeting of the 190 in congress. It is an honor to lead this committee which has a rich legislative history. Surprisingly on the first physician to have chaired the senate health education, labor and pensions committee but I'm particularly pleased about having this opportunity. I acknowledge senator sanders who will be here soon.
▶ 0:18:00Chair Cassidy: While we have disagreed often, when we work together and commit to the process, good things happen. Just complement and you.
▶ 0:18:07Sen. Sanders: Keep going.
▶ 0:18:09Chair Cassidy: It's my hope that we can build upon these previous efforts, finding new ways to collaborate this congress. I welcome new members, senators holly, banks, crapo, blackwell, blunt, rochester, and to have a little bit of a pun, brooks. Excited to have you back. Excited to have all the other members.
▶ 0:18:34Chair Cassidy: Working closely with the trump administration and members across the aisle, this committee has a real potential to tackle broad ranges of issues facing our families. One issue where we can find common ground is addressing the high cost of the script and drugs. Last congress we passed the pbm reform act, remote farming incentives for pbm's and ensuring discounts are passed on to the patients.
▶ 0:19:00Chair Cassidy: We also passed policy to bring lower-cost drugs to the market so americans can access these drugs on an affordable price. All those these did not pass last congress we will continue to advance in this congress. When it comes to solving the nation's education woes, the committee must look at the severity of declining child literacy in the long-term effects of that. Two thirds of U.S. public school students cannot read proficiently in the fourth grade , 40 percent are essentially nonreaders.
▶ 0:19:29Chair Cassidy: Students who cannot read are less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to be incarcerated. Without a literate workforce, we cannot fill the over 8 million jobs currently open. We cannot adequately staff the military. By the way, a passion of mine related to this is the issue of dyslexia. 1/5 of us in this room are dyslexic. Nothing to do with your intelligence, just the way that you read.
▶ 0:19:56Chair Cassidy: If we don't address this, though, that child's future is impaired, and if we do, that child reaches her or his potential. It is 20% of us, something we must address. We will examine this and work with local and state to improve literacy nationwide and to address literacy. One other thing. We need to address the rampant anti-semitism on college campuses which led to harassment of jewish students. This will be a priority in the new congress.
▶ 0:20:28Chair Cassidy: We must empower and protect the rights of more than 27 million gig workers nationwide. The biden harris administration attempted to erode the flexibility of independent workers, threatening their ability to provide for their families with that anti-worker agenda. We have to find ways to protect gig flexibility while increasing worker access to portable benefits like retirement and health care. That is something which will be of interest as well.
▶ 0:20:57Chair Cassidy: I hope both sides of the dais will join in this. Lastly, the committee must look at the retirement system. Specifically the failures of the pension benefit guarantee corporation, pbgc. Because of oversight over last congress, 375 million dollars in taxpayer funds were prevented from being wrongfully played to union pension funds.
▶ 0:21:22Chair Cassidy: As we look at how to make the government function better, reforming pbgc is crucial to ensuring americans can defend on their pension and have a secure retirement. Thank you again to all our members new and old. I look forward to the debates we have and hopefully the poly solutions that are better because of these debates. I now recognize senator sanders or his opening statement.
▶ 0:21:43Sen. Sanders: Thank you very much, Mr. chairman. I agree with your enormously important issues this committee deals with, it's important that we work together and go forward. I'm very proud of what we accomplished in the last session among many other things, we were able to get three major drug companies to lower the cost of asthma inhalers to $35, so that will mean a whole lot to
▶ 0:22:14Sen. Sanders: Millions of people suffering with asthma. We also played a role in making sure that insulin, the price of insulin is significantly reduced , and many other areas. As you will know, last year at the end of the session, we came together on a bipartisan agreement to address the primary health care crisis, something I hope we will continue to pursue in this committee of the expanding community health centers, the national teaching
▶ 0:22:47Sen. Sanders: Centers. We agreed on a bipartisan basis to lower the price of prescription drugs by taking on the greed of the pharmacy benefit managers, pbm's, making low-cost generic drugs more available to the american people. We agreed in that legislation on a bipartisan basis to reauthorize, expand, and strengthen the support act, older americans act, pandemic preparedness bill, workforce and innovation opportunity act. Those are important things that we accomplished.
▶ 0:23:19Sen. Sanders: Unfortunately, many of the bills that we had bipartisan agreement on did not make it into the cr. I would hope, Mr. chairman, together, perhaps the first order of business will be for us to make sure that the legislation we reached agreement on last year gets signed into law. I would hope that we can go forward on that. It is my sincere hope and expectation that that is done as greatly as possible.
▶ 0:23:49Sen. Sanders: This committee will continue to function in a bipartisan way. Paul after poll shows republicans, democrats, independents want us to lower the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, period we should not pay 10 times more than people in other countries. It is the greed of the drug companies. I hope we address both issues. The overwhelming majority of the american people want to make the cost of childcare, public colleges, and health care in general more affordable.
▶ 0:24:19Sen. Sanders: I think it's time we took on the greed of the insurance companies. Paul after poll shows the overwhelming of majority of americans want to increase the absurdly low $7.25 an hour minimum wage to a living wage. I have heard from senators on both sides of the aisle about the need to address the massive shortage of primary care doctors , nurses, dentists, mental health counselors, and other primary care workers.
▶ 0:24:48Sen. Sanders: I don't think there is any debate on that. We had a good hearing on it. Mr. chairman, you brought forward some witnesses. There is no debate. Let's see if we can do it. There are philosophical differences that separate us but there are a lot of issues I think there is broad agreement on. Let's go forward and address them.
▶ 0:25:08Chair Cassidy: Thank you, senator sanders. I move to adopt the committee rules. Aye. All opposed police say nay. Ayes have it. The rules are adopted. The help committee shall stand adjourned.