Mike Braun Raises Concern About The ‘Broken Nature’ Of The US Healthcare System

4 months ago

During a Senate Health Committee hearing last week, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) questioned witnesses about the maternal mortality rate and the “broken nature” of the healthcare system.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my home state of Indiana, we have the

00:06third highest maternal mortality rate at 44 deaths per 100,000 births. 22, that's

00:13sad. Regarding this sad state of affairs, a local news article said that nothing

00:20has changed in 10 years. That needs to change. That lack of improvement is

00:26disappointing state by state. That's why I've been vocal on health care in

00:32general here, and we did pass out of this committee the PREEMI Act

00:37reauthorization, which renews resources for HHS to promote healthy pregnancies.

00:43The Improving Access to Maternal Health for Military and Dependent Moms Act, that

00:49is being reviewed. Hopefully we get that through this committee. And the Standing

00:54with Moms Act, which would increase the availability of pregnancy related

00:58resources to expectant mothers, another bill. So we're drawing attention to it.

01:04My question is for Dr. Lawson. In your home state of Texas, what have you seen there?

01:10Have they been improving? There's a lot more agility at the state level to

01:17address things. Tell me what's been happening there. Thank you for the

01:21question. So up until 2021, we have not improved. Some new data, I know

01:29that our MMRC is working on the biannual report. We'll hopefully have that this

01:34summer to see where we are for 2022 and thus far. But overall in Texas, you know

01:39Texas has one of the worst rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. We are

01:44very excited that the postpartum Medicaid extension was made, but of

01:49course we are a state that does not have Medicaid expansion. What we are also

01:53concerned about from a workforce perspective is having enough physicians for the population.

02:00... that are doing a good job. Do you keep track of that because you'd think among 50 that someone...

02:30I can point to California, the California Perinatal Quality Collaborative.

02:38They've done some really great work, and especially when you think about that population, also

02:43New York is doing some really great work.

02:45I think, again, in collaboration with the MMRCs, the data piece is very important.

02:50That drives a lot of policy from a public health perspective and for hospitals.

03:01More doctors and professionals paying attention to it, especially among minorities as well.

03:08We should be throwing everything in the kitchen sink at this, both federally and by state.

03:14I want to segue to one other issue that I bring up always, is the broken nature of

03:20our healthcare system that's increasingly being run by large corporate entities that

03:27I don't know that have any interest in prevention and wellness, mostly in expensive remediation.

03:37Until we get that fixed, we're going to keep, I think, avoiding what we all know makes more

03:43sense, prevention and wellness.

03:46That's going to take a cultural change within healthcare itself.

03:53Probably the biggest thing would be how do you lower costs among insurance companies

03:59and hospitals?

04:00I can tell you what's been happening has been the opposite.

04:04It's alienated even a lot of physicians and nurses from getting into the business because

04:10their dream wasn't to be working for huge corporations that don't have practitioners

04:18in mind and the patient.

04:21That's got to change in terms of what we can do state by state and here as well.

04:26Senator Sanders and I introduced a bill and it's already got a lot of bipartisan support.

04:34Senator Smith, Hickenlooper, Grassley, Coons, Hassan, Ernst, and Baldwin.

04:40This would be transformational.

04:42It's a bill that's going to force corporate healthcare to accept transparency and competition,

04:51not to have barriers to entry for people to get into the healthcare business or try to

04:56corner the market with high costs along the way.

05:00I would urge all of you to make sure in a grassroots way you get behind it and until

05:06we break that grip to where that is in control, we're never going to address this or many

05:12other issues related to healthcare.

05:14Thank you for being here today.

Mike Braun Raises Concern About The ‘Broken Nature’ Of The US Healthcare System

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