House Committee on Investigations Passes Act to Improve Pharmaceutical Competition and Opportunity for Low-Income Potential Doctors

The House Committee on Investigations passed today the Decrease Research Expenses Act for Medical Expenditure Research (DREAMER) Act by a wide margin with no controversy. The bill, authored by Rep. Mike Turner (OH-10), Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-04), and Rep. Summer Lee (PA-12), seeks to bolster the small businesses that, according to the authors, make up nearly 44% of medical businesses while providing medical-school scholarships to low-income students to address a doctor shortage.

The DREAMER Act will raise revenue by decreasing “federal taxes on medical small businesses by 2.4%”, “increase federal flat taxes by 1%” on larger businesses, and with those funds create a detailed scholarship program from the overall gains from these taxes by creating a subcommittee to give out a Federal Medical Scholarship prioritizing low-income students for as many full scholarships a year as can be funded.

The authors hope that long-term, the DREAMER Act will “disband the monopoly” that large corporations have on the market and increase competition by empowering small businesses to establish themselves and compete with larger companies.

The bill faced no resistance, with plentiful cosponsors and the chairs skipping over Pro/Con debate entirely. Representatives Turner and Jordan stated that the DREAMER Act “was unique in that it was a bipartisan effort,” as well as its focus on the quality of care, by encouraging promising students who otherwise might not afford medical school to become doctors, as opposed to access to care.

This article was written by Julia Critz.