David P. Roe

Madam Chair, I am a U.S. Army veteran who has used the GI Bill.

While I strongly support being good stewards of resources expended by the Department of Defense to various educational institutions across the Nation, the amendment offered by my friend across the aisle goes too far by including the term proprietary when referring to universities. Congress and the Department of Education have set standards of financial responsibility and are already reviewing whether certain colleges and universities meet those standards.

Let's continue to hold all universities accountable for these standards, not just a select few. There is no reason for this amendment to exclude any colleges because all students deserve to know that their choice of school meets Federally set responsibility standards whether public, private, or proprietary.

Fortunately, this is already happening.

Unfortunately, this amendment is duplicative of the work that the Departments of Defense and Education are conducting and is simply an effort to further categorize colleges and universities and hold them to different levels of scrutiny.

Let's work together to make sure all students have access to a high quality, affordable education in a setting and format that works best for them.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table, H.R. 3401, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment. This bipartisan bill passed the Senate with 84 votes and should be sent to the President's desk for his signature today.

Mr. Speaker, today our bipartisan group led by Dr. Ruiz is introducing Protecting People from Surprise Medical Bills Act.

This commonsense piece of legislation will give patients peace of mind that an unexpected medical bill will not leave them in financial ruin, while setting up a fair, neutral process to resolve billing disputes between insurers and providers or hospitals.

For far too long, costly unexpected medical bills have caused financial stress, negatively impacting patients and their families all across the Nation. That is why our bill bans the practice of billing patients for unanticipated out-of-network care. It is not fair.

The patients may be incapacitated in an emergency or may have selected a facility that they believe is in network, to be met with a costly medical bill, all because one provider was out of network.

Similarly, providers are between a rock and a hard place because a Federal law called EMTALA requires them to provide care regardless of their ability to pay. Our bill resolves this by setting up a baseball- style arbitration between the medical provider and the insurer to compensate providers for care.

A similar New York State law has been proven successful with out-of- pocket billing records declining by 34 percent after 3 years.

It is time that all States have these protections. I urge support for this approach.