Pelosi Remarks at Mission Bay Innovation Summit in San Francisco

Pelosi Remarks at Mission Bay Innovation Summit in San Francisco

Monday, August 10, 2009

Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered keynote remarks at the 2009 Mission Bay Innovation Summit in San Francisco this afternoon. The summit brings together government, the private sector and academia to share ideas and best practices for fostering innovation in science and technology. Below are the Speaker's remarks as prepared:

â€Å"Thank you, Mayor Newsom. You have led the way in transforming a rail yard into a cutting-edge biotech and cleantech center right here at Mission Bay.

â€Å"With the Mission Bay Innovation Center, San Francisco will lead the nation. San Francisco is a place where new ideas flourish, where entrepreneurial thinking is encouraged, and where science is respected for its biblical power to cure.

â€Å"On the Mission Bay campus, scientists are right now leading breakthroughs in stem cell research and developing new treatments for everything from the flu to cancer.

â€Å"Our nation's universities have always been centers of cutting-edge thinking. In that regard, I would like to acknowledge Susan Desmond-Hellmann, the new Chancellor of UCSF and a leading scientific researcher and clinician.

â€Å"I'm so pleased to be here with John Kao and so many of you who are helping us reconnect our public policies with the need for us to support the entrepreneurial work that happens here at Mission Bay.

â€Å"All Americans are inheritors of a tradition of innovation. In fact, our nation owes its very existence to entrepreneurial ideas.

â€Å"Just last month, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, which we observed at the Capitol joined by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

â€Å"The remarkable achievement of the first lunar landing is possible because of a truly daring goal President John F. Kennedy set for this nation in 1961. He declared that before the decade was over, an American would land on the moon and return safely.

â€Å"As President Kennedy said, 'The vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we are first, and therefore, we intend to be first. Our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort.'

â€Å"With these words, we launched our Innovation Agenda four years ago. And while Congress passed the COMPETES Act after I became Speaker, we couldn't fund it until President Obama took office.

â€Å"In his Inaugural Address, President Obama pledged that we will: 'transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age;' 'harness the sun and the wind and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories;' 'build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together…;' and 'restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.'

â€Å"President Obama called for 'action, bold and swift… not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.' One week and one day later, we did just that: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included the single largest increase in funding for basic scientific research in the history of our nation - $17 billion for our nation's scientists and innovators.

â€Å"In addition to basic research, we are making historic investment in the technology infrastructure of this country in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For California alone, it included $85 billion.

â€Å"We designed the Recovery Act not just to be stimulative, but to be transformational. Throughout the legislation, particularly in the areas that addressed energy and health, we emphasized directing funds to develop and deploy the most cutting-edge initiatives and technologies.

â€Å"100 days after the President's inauguration, we passed the federal budget, which is built upon our three pillars: education, energy independence, and health care for all Americans. Our budget will lower taxes, reduce the deficit, and create jobs and grow the economy.

â€Å"We all know that innovation begins in the classroom. Chairman George Miller has passed the 'Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act' out of committee. It will generate $87 billion in savings that we will use to improve the quality of early learning and make higher learning more affordable through Pell Grants and improvements to our community colleges.

â€Å"With the American Clean Energy and Security Act, we continued our efforts to unleash private sector investment in clean energy to create millions of new jobs and make America the global innovation leader.

â€Å"As we rebuild America in a green way, we can create jobs - from our inner cities to rural America - that cannot be shipped overseas. With clean energy legislation, we are creating a framework in which innovation can occur and that gives business certainty that we are moving to a clean energy economy. That will unleash innovation, investment, and venture capital to drive new technologies into the market.

â€Å"Energy independence is a national security issue, a health issue, an economic issue, and our moral responsibility. As Teddy Roosevelt believed, God made the world and human beings are the stewards of it.

â€Å"The American Clean Energy and Security Act is driven by innovation. We know that innovative thinking will be central to our efforts to create a healthier America.

â€Å"Again, San Francisco is a model for the nation, leading the way in providing access to health care. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

â€Å"One of the first acts of our Democratic Congress was to provide quality, affordable health care for 11 million children.

â€Å"We also included funding in the Recovery Package that made investments in a healthier America. As I mentioned, we made historic investments in NIH and health IT.

â€Å"Now, we are closer than ever to enacting historic health insurance reform.

â€Å"All three committees in the House with jurisdiction over health insurance reform have passed this legislation. Our legislation will build on what works and fix what is broken in our health care system.

â€Å"Innovation is essential to our efforts to lower costs and improve quality as we preserve choice and expand coverage. That means, if you like what you have, you can keep it. Health care is a right not a privilege.

â€Å"Our legislation will be paid for - it will not add to the deficit - and it will lower costs to the consumer, businesses large and small, our economy, and the federal budget. Health care reform is Entitlement Reform - it will lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

â€Å"The Affordable Health Choices Act will focus on value, not volume. It will provide cost effective care, 'for the good of the patient.' Technology and innovation are essential to our success in improving delivery of medical services and reforming the health insurance system in America.

â€Å"This legislation will improve the delivery of health care and reform health insurance in our country. To do so, we must hold health insurers accountable. We must put Americans and their doctors back in charge-not the insurance companies -to guarantee stability, lower costs, higher quality and more choices of plans.

â€Å"Here's what it will mean to middle-class Americans:

• No discrimination for pre-existing conditions

• No dropping your coverage because you become sick

• No refusal to renew your coverage, if you've paid in full and become ill

• No more job or life decisions made based on loss of coverage

• No need to change doctors or plans, if you like the coverage you have

• No co-pays for preventive and wellness care

• No excessive out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays

• Yearly caps on what you pay

• No yearly or lifetime cost caps on what insurance companies cover

â€Å"We must be successful in making America healthier, and we must do so by reducing costs.

â€Å"My thinking in this is influenced by Dr. Clay Christensen and his disruptive solutions for reducing the cost of health care by employing technological innovation.

â€Å"Health IT - electronic medical records and a common record - for example will reduce error, improve care, and lower costs. It will also contribute to the integration of providers, the building of a value network, and enhance the involvement of patients in their own care. In the area of diagnostics, technology will enable more sophisticated procedures to be done in lower cost venues of care with lower cost caregivers.

â€Å"Care can be more patient friendly by being faster, closer to home or work, and at lower cost to the patient, his employer, his insurance company, and the government.

â€Å"We have an historic opportunity which can best be met with a public option. We have great challenges: regional and utilization disparities and reimbursement; the question of fee for service; the availability of health care professionals.

â€Å"We need to be first. With your help, we will meet that challenge and pass America's Affordable Health Choices Act.

â€Å"And our efforts to reform health insurance will work, because there is no limit to American ingenuity.

â€Å"As President Kennedy and the astronauts of the Apollo mission demonstrated over 40 years ago, there is no challenge too great for the American people.”