00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate the comments you've made about the Rural Health Transformation Program. That is something many of us worked on, and we were pleased to push that out of this committee, and I know Dr. Oz is moving forward with implementing that.
00:21I appreciate your comments to Senator Warner on the area wage index. He and I have worked on fixing that, and we appreciate your attention. I am delighted to know that you're going to end the revolving door in the conflicts of interest.
00:39I have found it so unseemly that people who work with a pharmaceutical or with a big food company then go back over into CDC or NIH or FDA, and then they're signing off on regulation for their former employer and many times their future employer.
01:01So we appreciate that. Senator Langford went to you on the PBMs, and as you are aware, my PBM Act that Senator Wyden worked with me on, that made it out of this committee last cycle.
01:19And making certain that we keep these rural pharmacies open, and making certain that PBMs do not profit above what is their standard service fee, and that they have to disclose all their pricing, that is going to be an imperative.
01:37So will you work with us to get that PBM legislation across the finish line and to the President's desk?
01:46Yes, Senator, absolutely.
01:52Interoperability is something that you have announced, a new interoperability framework to better align data-sharing principles, and this is important to digital health.
02:07And as you're aware, when we passed 21st century cures in 2018, the software act and that health IT definition is something that I worked tirelessly on to get implemented.
02:22So what I want to hear from you is how does CMS plan to align this new framework with the existing federal framework, and how are we going to be able to move forward with one national policy on interoperability?
02:41Well, I don't know if we, you know, what we have right now is concrete commitments from the 60 top tech companies who we were able to convene to do data sharing,
02:59to do patient accessibility and to do interoperability, but I can't tell you how that's going to mesh.
03:06Then if you will have someone submit to me in writing what that pathway is, this is something that is essential if we're going to be able to benefit from that data.
03:20So having some specificity on the pathway will be helpful.
03:25I did want to talk with you.
03:27Last time you were here, I talked about the concerns on overprescribing prescription stimulant drugs for children.
03:37And there are ways that HHS can work collaboratively with state agencies on this and to actually promote more community-based intervention to combat overprescribing.
03:52And we all have seen the harmful side effects.
03:55And there's a lot of reporting out there on this and tremendous concern for grandmamas like me who see children and friends of our grandchildren who suffer with this.
04:10So I know your team is working on solutions.
04:14So you're going to have your make our children healthy again strategy that you're going to release.
04:21But talk for a moment.
04:23We've got 30 seconds left.
04:25Talk for a moment on how you can better arm parents with information on the harmful side effects of overprescribing these stimulant drugs.
04:37I mean, one of the problems, Senator, is that, you know, we now have one out of every five kids on these drugs and the antidepressants, even more.
04:48And we know very little about long-term impacts because NIH and CDC have been asleep at the wheel.
05:00Oh, right now, we are doing those studies.
05:04We're doing extensive studies so that we can warn parents and so that we can force the companies to put labels on their products.
05:10And, you know, we'll do whatever we can to show that just to get data out to the public.
05:18That's really what our function is.
05:20And to show what the long-term impact of some of these drugs is.
05:24You know, are we actually preventing suicide or are we creating more suicide?
05:30And that's something that we don't know the answer to, which is, you know, how did these drugs become so common in our society without us even knowing the answer to those questions?
05:43That is malpractice at these agencies and that is the malpractice that I am going to fix.
05:51Senator Warren.
Comments