US Rep. French Hill on health insurance, housing affordability
U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, spent time in Congress this week working on health care, housing affordability and a host of banking issues. In an interview for Talk Business & Politics D.C. Edition, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee shared his thoughts on these topics and the controversy surrounding Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and the targeted bombings involving boats from Venezuela.
Hill said he’s not sure what may get resolved regarding health insurance premiums.
“I think both the House and Senate have working groups to see what legislative path they can find that contributes to affordability in healthcare in the Senate. I think they’re looking at what changes might be made to the insurance company premium program that is a part of Obamacare, the ACA,” he said. “In the House, I think Speaker Johnson’s been looking at broader reforms that lead to healthcare, affordability and transparency, increased competition, increased choice. Senator Cassidy in the Senate is also looking at how do we expand the health savings account to benefit more families. So there are a lot of ideas floating.
When asked if he has a preference at this point for any particular path, Hill said there are a few basic tenets he wants to see adhered.
“I think a conceivable solution would be reforming the insurance company premium program to make it much more targeted as it was in the original ACA combined with some transparency and competition enhancements,” he said. “I think that would be a good approach. I think that would lead to lower premiums, although premiums are mostly driven obviously by health outcomes across the country and health condition of pools of people. But I think it would contribute to have more competition. I hear this from my constituents all the time about why is there not a stated price to go get a particular health diagnostic service like a CT scan or an MRI? They report seeing them hundreds of dollars apart in the same city like Little Rock.”
The House has been discussing ways to make housing more affordable. High interest rates for the last few years combined with more expensive input costs, driven in part by inflation and pandemic era supply chain issues, have shrunk the ability of buyers to make home purchases.
“I think housing affordability is probably the top issue for Americans. We’ve seen the first time home buyer numbers drop due to high interest rates that were mightily contributed by bad fed policy and bad fiscal policies coming out of the global pandemic. And we haven’t recovered from the global pandemic,” he said.
He noted that the House work has focused on some aspects of loosening regulations and encouraging local zoning flexibility as part of the Congressional conversation.
“Building codes by HUD is a top choice because when you change the HUD building code, you change it for all local jurisdictions across the country. What can we do there that would produce lower costs? What can we do to incentivize cities to have better zoning and development rules that would lower costs and give more flexibility to builders to build different sizes and different units? These are the kinds of issues that we’re doing on housing and we hope to have a package that we can get enacted into law early in 2026,” said the 2nd District Congressman.
Hill, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, has been privy to classified hearings regarding the lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in international waters. Amidst claims of committing war crimes, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been on the hot seat for his role in the matter.
“I can’t talk about things that are classified or something of that nature serving on the Intelligence committee, but all the members of Congress were offered an opportunity to read an operations memo and legal analysis memo that the administration shared with Congress several weeks ago, and that serves as the outline of the operations being conducted by the U.S. this week.”
Hill said he has talked to leaders in the region, including officials in Colombia and Honduras.
“What I learned was all of the neighboring countries are working in coordinating with the U.S. and their territorial waters to try to interdict the drug traffickers, and the U.S. operations have been limited to out in international waters. So that’s the first comment I’d make,” he said. “Secondly, the House Intelligence Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee and Armed Services Committee are all conducting oversight about the process. I think you’ll see and hear more from Congress about that in coming days about the goals, the structure of the process of the president’s attempt to tackle the international drug cartels in international waters.”
In this interview, Hill also discussed work on the House Financial Services committee that he chairs. Specifically, he addressed fraud legislation, deposit insurance modernization, and regulating prediction markets.
You can listen to Rep. Hill’s full interview at this link.