Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, unveiled a lengthy report Wednesday that he says serves as a “roadmap” “Make America Healthy Again” and points out how America’s flawed health care system affects “national defense.”
The 47-page report — titled “The Case for Health Care Freedom” — is a “painstakingly researched” summary of “America’s health care crisis and how to solve it,” Roy said.
Its findings include US healthcare spending reaching $4.9 trillion in 2023.
As a share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), health spending accounts for 17.6%, and costs are growing about 1% faster than annual GDP, the report said.
The report argues that “if conservatives care about a strong national defense and low taxes, these trends must be reversed.”
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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, attends the inauguration of Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“The Case for Health Care Freedom lays out a detailed roadmap for how Republicans in Congress can help President Trump deliver on his promise to solve America’s health care crisis,” Roy said in a statement. “The problem isn’t just health insurance, big pharma, or food additives that make us unhealthy; it’s the fact that politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations benefit from a broken, chronic system that allows them to put profits on patients with impunity.”
Roy argued that right now Congress has “a huge opportunity to get American health care back on track by embracing patient and physician empowerment through promoting expansionary health savings accounts in the budget reconciliation process, and we need to take full advantage of it.” The congressman went on to say: “giving more power and money to the same actors will not work; if we want Make America Healthy Againthe answer is the freedom of health care. If we want to control our health care budgets and spending, the answer is health care freedom.”
The sweeping report comes just two days after President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term. The promise to “Make America Healthy Again” became a focal point of Trump’s campaign when Democratic independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race and supported him. Trump has nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, but his confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled.
The report includes criticism of a program that provides food assistance to low-income households.
Candidate for Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attend the inauguration of Donald Trump in the US Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025. (Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)
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“While foodborne chronic diseases kill up to 678,000 Americans annually, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is likely to pay over $250 billion in unhealthy food costs over the next 10 years,” Roy’s office notes.
The report also targets coveted weight loss and diabetes drugs touted as “miracle drugs,” which even celebrities have used to shed pounds in recent months. It found that the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk “spent at least $25.8 million over the past decade on US medical professionals to promote two of its anti-obesity drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda.”
The report estimates that families and their employers spent an average of $25,000 a year in 2024, or nearly the price of a company car, on health insurance, despite Obamacare’s “false promise to lower premiums by $2,500 a year.” According to the report, premium costs have risen at least 100% since 2010.
President Donald Trump holds an executive order after signing it during a closed inauguration parade in Washington, DC, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
“Obamacare has made health care so expensive that it now subsidizes households earning up to $600,000 a year for their health insurance,” the report said.
In 2024, the report found, four of the top five US industries by revenue were related to healthcare. These were the hospitals, which were the first; wholesale of medicines, cosmetics and toiletries, which is in second place; health insurance, which took third place; and the wholesale of drugs, which came in fifth place.
The report also says that 47% of hospital cash prices are lower than the price negotiated by the insurer “that people pay hundreds of dollars a month for the privilege they have.”
The report claims that multiple insurance companies, including UnitedHealth, Anthem/Elevance and Humana, “earn” most of their revenue from taxpayers.
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“We don’t have a free market in the health care system. The government controls more than 80% of health care spending,” according to a summary of the report provided by Roy’s office. “The left’s solution to fix our health care system spends even more money and gives the government even more control over the health care system. ‘Medicare for All’ would cost an additional $33 trillion over 10 years and leave 70% of Americans financially worse off.”
