Congressman Proposes Cure for U.S. Health Care System

Published February 5, 2025

The Daily Signal: Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) issued a diagnosis for America’s broken health care system, and the congressman says the problem isn’t what people think.

America’s health crisis doesn’t come from health insurance, Big Pharma, or even food additives, Roy says.

“It’s the fact that politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations are all benefitting from a broken, cronyistic system that lets them put profits over patients with impunity,” Roy told The Daily Signal.

In Roy’s new report, “The Case for Healthcare Freedom,” the House Freedom Caucus member says Congress can make America healthy again by promoting expansion of health savings accounts in the upcoming budget reconciliation process. Health savings accounts allow individuals and families to save money, earn interest on it, and spend it tax-free on health care expenses.

“Giving the same actors more power and money won’t work; if we want to Make America Healthy Again, the answer is health care freedom,” Roy said in a news release. “If we want to control our budgets and health care spending, the answer is health care freedom.”

Not Free, Not Competitive

The report, first shared with The Daily Signal on January 22, says our current health care system is neither free nor competitive.

“It is government-regulated, government-funded, Big Insurance-managed ‘care’ resulting in a broken system on the brink of fully government-run health care,” the report states. “Half measures by Republicans will not save us from this disaster.”

The rising costs of health care have reduced choices, and the complexity of the system has led to calls for more government control, but this perspective ignores the true culprit, Roy said.

“What they will fail to notice is that it is the very government they are willing to give control of the health care system [to] that destroyed our health care system,” the report states.

Though the United States spends more on health care than any other developed country, America has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest proportion of people with multiple chronic diseases, and one of the highest obesity rates among wealthy countries.

“America is the center of medical innovation in the world,” the report states. “It is not something we should take for granted. This role as a world leader does not mean that we need a drug for everything. Especially things that could be mitigated by eating a balanced diet, sleeping more, and exercising.”

Conflicts of Interest

Instead of “free-market” health care, America has “textbook crony capitalism” to the “detriment of the patient and providers,” the report states.

“Our ‘health’ focused government agencies are littered with conflicts of interest,” the report states. “And unsurprisingly, American health is impacted. Indeed, chronic food illness kills up to 678,000 Americans per year.”

“Our system is run by government and insurance bureaucrats and is ‘private’ in name only,” the report states. “Health care special interests spend $750 million annually lobbying to keep the racket going,” the report states.

The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health insurance is close to $25,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

American health care is “hostile” to innovation as the “regulations and restrictions that have been placed on the health care system claiming to ‘protect patients’ have only led to the opposite,” Roy said in his release.

Subsidies for Health Damage

As Roy’s report describes, the federal government will likely spend $250 billion on junk food over the next 10 years through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps. In addition, much of American health care spending—$4.9 trillion in 2023—pays for drugs instead of addressing the root causes of illness and obesity.

Novo Nordisk, the drug maker behind the weight-loss drugs Wegovy, Saxenda, and Ozempic, has spent $25.8 million over the past decade promoting its obesity drugs, the report states.

Food-related chronic diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes, obesity, and heart disease are caused or strongly affected by unhealthy diets.

“As a share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), health spending accounted for 17.6 percent, and costs are growing around one percent faster than the annual GDP,” states the report. “If conservatives care about a strong national defense and low taxes, these trends have to be reversed.”

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell ([email protected]) is a reporter for The Daily Signal. A version of this article was published in The Daily Signal. Reprinted with permission.

Internet Info

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), “The Case for Healthcare Freedom,” January 22, 2025: https://roy.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-chip-roy-charts-bold-new-path-make-america-healthy-again-landmark-report