The Senate Committee on health, education, labor and pensions will please come to order. This morning were holding our first hearing on stabilizing premiums and ensuring access to insurance in the individual Health Insurance market for 2018. We have five state Insurance Commissioners. Thank you for coming from long distances some of you to be with us to give your testimony on how to help the 18 million americans in the individual Insurance Market. To give an idea of how many people are interested in this, senator murray and i invited senators who were not on our committee which has about a quarter of the senate is on this committee, to come to a coffee with the five commissioners that we have just completed for an hour. We had 31 senators there. So thats remarkable level of interest. Senator murray and i will each have an Opening Statement then we will introduce our five witnesses, after their testimony senators will have an opportunity to ask witnesses questions and we will do it in f
We have a boat at 11 45 but that should leave us an opportunity to her from our witnesses and to have good time for questions. I told our witnesses that i was delighted to be talk about something other than the individual Health Insurance market. Im really quite serious about that because we know that larger issues in health care are much more than the 6 of the people i the one of whom is important not to buy the insurance on the individual Health Insurance market. So were glad to get, glad to have this discussion and that the subject in which both republicans and democrats have a lot of interest, and we look forward to your advice. Today were Holding Hearing to look at what can be done to encourage people to make healthier lifestyle choices, o prevent serious illnesses and reduce healthcare costs. Senator murray and i will each have an Opening Statement and then will introduce the witnesses. After the witnesses testimony senators will each have five minutes of questions. Let me say be
Do you plan to live here in washington and if so, where . Rep. Elect fernandez we have an apartment nearby, my wife and i. We will be traveling back and forth and try to spend as much time in the district as possible to keep hearing peoples problems and understand what we need to work for. We dont want to lose touch of our community and its needs. Tell us about your wife and her influence on you. Rep. Elect fernandez well, she is a School Teacher and a principal. She is my rock. She has been a great asset during my campaign and even here, she is sitting right back there. She is a very positive influence. Representative elect gonzales, we appreciate your time. Thank you for talking to cspan. The publican representing 19th district. Why did you decide to run for office . Well, like a lot of americans, i was very frustrated union. E state of the and i thought that washington as just broken and dysfunctional, and not solving facing lems that were in our country. Three children, a 5, 4, and
Thursday, where you stand on the republican bill thats out. I think its a big step in the right direction. Is not perfect and i think as republicans , my message is you cant let perfect be the enemy of good here. Its defining, its declawing obamacare strikes to the heart of obamacare with respect to doing away withthe mandate. Repealing the taxes, gutting the regulations that again is at the heart of government controlled healthcare as i described and then begins the process of reforming with republican reforms that are based in market. Creating a situation where you have insurance competing for us as patients or consumers which i think if you have that dynamic in a robust way, you will have prices go down and you will have better services. And you will empower patients who got tax credits in there, you got expansion of Health Savings accounts, and then you got ways to reform medicaid and give states more flexibility so i think the big step in the right direction, i think there are a c
Soma, outser mission, very competitive marketplace with low unemployment rates are going to continue through the life of this agreement, but we think weve now really hit a stride with this excelsior, client town, southeast neighborhoods. Program the 40 goal was attained and that well continue this high rate. We are also very pleased to report that over 70 of those hires are august 14thjuly 2015. Coming from targeted neighborhoods the systems were filled with identified in the d. A. Our referrals. 74 of the 80 hires were from additional accomplishments from the Development Agreement as you the priority neighborhoods from the heard, weve not only initiated agreement and i just mentioned on the last slide. Community discussion at the saint lukes this is a vast improvement over the first year. At the end of the first year campus but weve had community they did a 13year deficit of a hiring engagement at all of our campuses. There are always going to be deficit down to 11. Members at im plea