Come back here to try to make a difference. I want to congratulate you on the difference you have made. Now one of the questions i would ask you is why youre willing to leave a place with so much responsibility and background and capability to be willing to be the secretary of health and Human Services. Thank you, senator. When i think about the mission of the department of health and Human Services, which is to improve the health, safety, and wellbeing of the American People, its what ive literally spent my life trying to do. And so to have the opportunity to participate if confirmed, to be to serve as the secretary of health and Human Services and to try to guide that organization in a direction that would further fulfill that mission, i cant think of anything more exciting for fulfilling. I think you have the background for doing that too,
with the wide range of experience you had between the different practices and hospitals and then coming here and going through a number of Differ
you mentioned that there are counties in your state where there s only one provider. there are five states in this nation where there s only one insurance provider. there are one-third of the counties in this country that only have one insurance provider. we must as policymakers, as folks administering these programs, we must ask resources, what s going on? where are the problems out there? that may work for the insurers in certain instances. it may work for government. it doesn t work for patients. so if we keep the patients at the center of all of this, we ll get to the right answer. that s what i hope to do with each and every one of you. i appreciate that. and i got to work for years with senator kennedy on biologics and biosimilars and having the requirements for their biosimilarity and interchangeability has needed some additional information. the fda has issued guidance documents since the law passed. but they haven t set policy on
there is only one provider. there are five states in this nation where there is only one insurance provider, one-third of the counties in this country only have one insurance provide provider. we must, as policymakers, and end as folks administering these programs, we must ask ourselves, what is going on? what are the problems out there? that may work for the insurers in certain instances, it may work for government, but that doesn t work for patients. so we keep the patients at the center of all of this we will get to the right answer, and that is what i hope to do with each and every one of you. i appreciate that, and i got to work for years with senator kennedy on biologics and bio similars, and having the requirements for the bio similarity has needed some additional information. the fda has issued guidance documents since the law passed, but they haven t set policy on interchangeability with the reference to that.