Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ) has proclaimed that the healthcare technology revolution is already here, and Congress must embrace it.
"Too much of Washington still talks about health care like the only questions left are who gets billed and how much government has to borrow to cover it," Rep. Schweikert said in recent comments delivered on the House floor. "Meanwhile, the actual revolution is already here."
Rep. Schweikert highlighted a recent roundtable he held with executives from several healthcare companies, including Banner Health, Doctronic.AI, Calviri, Regenesis, and WHOOP, where the possibility of home multi-cancer detection systems for just $150 are being developed.
"Wearables are moving toward being a medical lab on your body that can feed information to the provider so they know whether you actually need to come in or whether care can be handled automatically," the Arizona Congressman expressed, noting that the Apple Watch is already an FDA-approved heart monitoring device. "If we had the nerve to legalize the disruption instead of protecting the old way of doing business, we could change the cost of care in this country in a very big way."
In a March 2024 interview with Cactus Politics, Schweikert emphasized the need for technological innovation to deal with the health crisis gripping America, saying, "We need to think much more creatively and much differently and stop pretending that this sort of government model is the solution. Instead, it turns out that it actually comes through technology and incentives."
He pointed out that the mobile video game Pokemon Go, which requires players to personally travel on foot to capture, train, and battle the iconic video game creatures, proved far more effective in encouraging young people to get outside and exercise "than anything we have done in a quarter century. And it was not government, it was a game."
