Former Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) said in an interview Thursday that he expects pieces of health care legislation that were dropped amid talks to avert a government shutdown last month will be brought back “fairly soon” with the support of the incoming Trump administration.
Bucshon spoke at “Trust in Science: The High-Stakes Game For U.S. Public Health” event, hosted by the The Hill and sponsored by the Alliance for Aging Research. The congressman from Louisiana retired from Congress at the end of the 118th Congress.
The Hill’s contributing editor Steve Scully asked Bucshon how Republicans’ imminent trifecta of control of the federal government will affect public health issues.
“I think in a positive way,” Bucshon, a physician, said. “You saw at the end of the last Congress, where we had this large funding bill, and there was a lot of bipartisan health care pieces of legislation that were in there and those were agreed to in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, because of the funding situation and the size of the legislation, all of those got dropped out.”
Bucshon predicted there will be a “concerted effort” in both the House’s Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees to bring these pieces of legislation back.
“I think that will happen fairly soon, and I think the administration will be supportive of most of those things,” he added.
The stopgap bill that ultimately passed last month and prevented a government shutdown included extensions of Medicare telehealth flexibilities but excluded pharmacy benefit manager reforms.
Noting the 14 years Bucshon served in Congress, Scully asked what surprised him the most working in the House of Representatives.
“So people ask me that question, ‘What’s biggest surprise when you came to Congress?'” said Bucshon. “You won’t be surprised by this answer. The amount of quality individuals who are actually members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. People, I think … people are surprised when you say that they are in your district. They’ll be like, ‘Really? That’s not what we see on TV.'”
“Most people in Congress that I know on both sides of the aisle are here trying to do their version of the right thing,” Bucshon added. “You may not agree with their version but that doesn’t mean they’re poorly motivated, right?”
