'Shut Your Mouth!': Hearing Comes To Screeching Halt After Randy Fine Accuses Witness Of Lying

[0:00] The Ranking Member yields. Now I'll call on Representative Fein from Florida for your five minutes of questioning. [0:07] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Woodhouse, do you think it's okay to lie to Congress? [0:11] I don't know. Are you lying to Congress? [0:13] All right, I'll take that as a no. [0:14] You said in your testimony that 15 million Americans would lose their health care. [0:19] Do you stand by that statement? [0:20] That is what the CBO said. [0:21] Do you know what an American is? Do you know what an American is? [0:24] That is what the CBO said. [0:25] No, that is not what the CBO said. Do you know what an American is? [0:28] Absolutely. Absolutely what the CBO said. [0:29] Okay, so when the CBO said that millions of, even in that nonsense statistic you gave, that included health care for non-Americans. [0:38] So you clearly don't understand what the difference between an American and a foreigner who's getting health care coverage is. [0:44] Given that you sat here and lied, and I gave you the chance to correct yourself, I'm not interested in anything else you have to say. [0:50] I don't think anyone else in this committee has as well. [0:52] Your time is done. I will move on. [0:54] You can shut your mouth. You lied to Congress. [0:56] Mr. Newman, Mr. Newman, Mr. Newman, Mr. Newman, he's accusing the witness of lying. [1:03] I am, and I proved that he lied, and I'm moving on with my questions now. [1:07] Mr. Newman, you testify that for every dollar of care delivered, employers pay $1.30 in bank costs. [1:12] Mr. Chairman, I demand that the member's words be taken down. He's accusing somebody of lying. [1:17] He did lie. You want to debate it? He lied. That's not in debate. [1:21] Mr. Chairman, I ask that his words be taken down. [1:25] He lied. He lied. I gave him the chance to correct it. [1:29] He chose not to, and it was a lie. [1:32] It's objectively false, the testimony he gave before this committee. [1:36] I even asked him, does he know what an American is? [1:37] Yes, we, okay. Just pause just a moment. [1:44] Okay. [3:54] I mean, the words that it said at the top. [5:48] The second time is, okay. [5:50] I'm sorry, and it's meant for the minority. [6:06] It's got the script for both, but it's highlighted for the minority. [6:09] Sorry for the double story. [6:11] It's only for a witness-giving foster. [7:57] Are there a witness to give foster? [8:02] Yeah, right. [8:10] If the witness will just stand by, we are going to recess for a few minutes to work through the legalities of this. [9:08] Basically, legalities are such that a witness is in charge with misspeaking, and we need to go through that because that is a crime. [9:24] No, no, no. [9:26] Mr. Chairman, the problem is he's violated the decorum, the rules of decorum. [9:29] He's accused a witness, Mr. Fine has, of committing a crime based on his own opinion, and that's a violation of decorum. [9:39] That's why I asked for his words to be struck down. [9:41] Okay. [9:42] So we're going to recess and work this through and just bear with us until we get this done. [9:48] Thank you. [9:49] Okay. [9:50] The committee will reconvene and come to order following our recess, and with that, Mr. Fine will. [10:01] Okay. [10:04] Well, thank you. [10:05] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [10:07] I'll ask him to suspend. [10:08] Yeah. [10:09] Suspend just for a minute. [10:26] Okay. [10:27] Okay. [10:28] A little bit of business here. [10:29] The gentleman from California has asked the gentleman for his words to be taken down. [10:34] Does the gentleman wish to ask him to withdraw or modify the words to which the gentleman objective? [10:40] Mr. Fine. [10:46] Do you? [10:47] No, I'm not taking my words down, so no. [10:48] Okay. [10:50] All right. [10:51] And the chair has prepared to rule an opinion of the chair. [10:53] The gentleman's words are in order. [10:55] Mr. Chairman, I'd like a voice, a vote, please. [10:59] Okay. [11:00] So we'll take a vote. [11:04] So we'll take a vote. [11:06] All those in favor, signify by saying aye. [11:09] Aye. [11:11] All those opposed, no. [11:12] No. [11:13] No, no. [11:14] In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. [11:16] And the motion to table is not agreed to. [11:18] And the gentleman has three minutes and 54 seconds remaining. [11:21] Well, thank you. [11:23] And I want to thank the ranking member for pointing out that lying to Congress is a crime. [11:28] I'm going to move on to the questions I was going to ask. [11:31] Mr. Newman, you testify that for every dollar of care delivered, employers pay $1.30 in plan costs. [11:37] Providers receive 80 cents. [11:39] Could you help us understand what accounts for the remaining 50 cents or approximately 62.5% of the amount paid to providers? [11:47] Where in the system are those costs incurred? [11:52] Excuse me. [11:53] Thank you for the question. [11:54] The committee has spent an enormous amount of time bringing transparency to PBMs, right? [11:57] And there's this concept of spread where it was, you know, a misplaced dollar that went from one place to another. [12:03] The medical side and the difficulty of it comes because that spread comes from a variety of sources and places. [12:11] For the provider side, here's the reality. [12:14] If you look at any public filing from any public hospital system, regardless of plan type source, right? [12:21] Marketplace, self-insured, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it. [12:24] There is an average write-off of 75% of patient balances tied to deductibles and other things like that, that they go uncollected. [12:33] That is regardless of market type. [12:35] But right out the bat, if in your market, you know, you're reliant on 30% of your revenue coming from patients, well, guess what? [12:41] There's 22 points right out the door, right? [12:43] You know, it has that shift. [12:44] The second part of that is payers don't pay, you know, on here. [12:49] You've dealt with countless hearings around insurance companies and the prior authorizations and denials of claims and all those things. [12:55] That adds another 5% to 10% of seepage, you know, off of this. [12:58] And then your typical health system, because of the complexity of U.S. healthcare, figuring out how to get paid, who to get paid by, when to get paid by, [13:05] chasing after them, you name it, is spending somewhere between 12% and 15% of their operating budget just trying to figure out how to get paid. [13:14] I mean, you've run businesses. [13:15] A 15% cost to get paid is not a functional marketplace. [13:18] So that all adds up to that 20% to 30% in any place, in any market, in any provider. [13:24] On the employer side, on fully insured plans, this has been the margin on top of medical loss ratio. [13:31] But in the self-insured space, it shows up as admin fees, transaction fees, clawback fees, consultant broker, you know, kind of fees, [13:41] stop loss carrier rates that are inflated because of the fact that they have no data or no visibility. [13:46] The problem with this grift is that there isn't one single boogeyman, right? [13:52] That's why we have to rebuild the system and simplify it. [13:55] It's not a renovation because it'd be the renovation from hell. [13:58] Well, thank you. [13:59] And thank you for your answer. [14:00] Look, I think that we've got real problems in the healthcare system. [14:03] I think the biggest one is that we've detached who pays for the service from what the service costs. [14:12] And when you can buy something and you don't know how much it actually costs, you tend to buy too much of it. [14:17] There's a reason the market works. [14:19] When prices go up, people are willing to supply more of it, but they typically are willing to purchase less of it until you reach that equilibrium. [14:27] In healthcare, we've broken that. [14:29] Because if you have a copay of $10 to go to the doctor, if you think you're going to get $11 worth of value going to the doctor, then you're going to go to the doctor. [14:38] Even if going to that doctor costs $200, you're not thinking about the right way. [14:42] I think your model helps us do this. [14:44] But no matter what our issues are as it relates to healthcare, if we're going to solve them, it is essential that we deal in the world of facts, that we deal in the world of reality, and we deal in the world of truth. [14:55] So thank you all for being here, and hopefully moving forward we can begin to do that a little bit better. [14:59] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. [15:01] I yield back. [15:02] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [15:03] I yield back. [15:04] I yield back. [15:06] I yield back.