U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, participated in the nomination hearing for Casey Means to serve as Medical Director in the Regular Corps of the Public Health Service and Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.
During the hearing, Senator Mullin addressed comments made by Ranking Member Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), focusing on issues related to healthcare affordability and government policy. Mullin stated, “I want to address a couple of things. During the ranking member’s opening statement, he talked about misinformation coming from this administration and I just want to point out that the Biden Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy… a court actually ruled against him in 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court for trying to censor free speech on social media. That’s misinformation.”
He continued by saying, “And so for us to throw out an accusation like that with no evidence, when the ranking member was completely silent when that took place. There’s really some hypocrisy there. When we start talking about health care not being affordable, the ranking member and I actually agree on that, the problem is you supported the same tools that got us to where health care is unaffordable because ACA, affordable health care, which is completely unaffordable, has risen three times faster than inflation itself.”
Mullin emphasized his focus on facts: “I’m pointing out facts. You can say what you want. I’m just pointing out facts. The fact is, it has risen three times faster, and we know it, yet we still want to sit here and defend it.”
Addressing criticism regarding efforts by former President Trump’s administration to reform healthcare policy, Mullin said: “The ranking member wants to talk about all the death that is supposedly going to be happening because of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, because how dare they look at a health care system that is broken and unaffordable and try to make changes, but yet the definition of insanity is what? Doing the same thing, expecting different results. So we should just sit here and accept it?”
On scientific inquiry into vaccines and autism rates in children, Mullin commented: “And how dare we look into vaccines to just simply look to see if maybe vaccines may be a partial cause to autism when it’s rising at a rate faster than any country in the nation. How dare us look at science? My goodness, science is supposed to be perfect. I thought science was always supposed to be studied.”
He added support for further investigation: “I’m for looking into it. As a father of six kids. Yeah, I want to look into it. I want to know what’s causing it, and I will turn over every stone. And so Dr. Means thank you for saying I want to turn over every stone. Good on you.”
Discussing healthcare costs more broadly he said: “I’m not a doctor. I’m not sitting here trying to say we shouldn’t do something. I’m saying let’s go after it. Let’s look at it. Let’s question what we’re doing. Let’s look at the health care system. We can agree on that one. I just don’t want to socialize it, but we can agree that it is absolutely not affordable. 100% not affordable. Yet it was supposed to be affordable. That’s what we were sold by Obamacare.” He called for bipartisan cooperation: “So how about we work together and say ‘Hey scrap ACA admit it doesn’t work Admit you guys made a mistake and let’s work at something with President Trump to make affordable health care healthy and affordable for everybody.’ But there’s zero chance you guys could do that Zero chance Yet everybody we bring up here you guys chastise for trying to make changes God forbid we change and try to fix our broken system.”
Senator Mullin also responded directly when interrupted by Senator Sanders: “I’m sorry I didn’t ask your opinion on that And if I cared about your opinion I would ask you but I don’t care about your opinion You’re part of the system You’re part of the problem You’ve been sitting here longer than I’ve even been alive This is your problem You should have fixed this a long time ago You’ve been railing on it so long What have you been doing?”
Senator Mullin has represented Oklahoma interests since his election first as U.S Representative before joining the Senate (official biography). His background includes growing up in Westville on his family ranch; he attended Stilwell High School before pursuing further education (official biography). He has advocated for small businesses and rural development in Oklahoma (policy priorities). Mullin graduated from Stilwell High School; he later earned an applied science degree in construction technology from Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology (official biography).
He also emphasizes protecting parental rights in education along with Second Amendment rights (policy priorities) , reflecting his focus on family values.
