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Washington, D.C. (May 14, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust, delivered opening remarks at the subcommittee hearing on Republicans’ assault on science, scientists, and medical research.

Below are Ranking Member Nadler’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at today’s subcommittee hearing.

WATCH Ranking Member Nadler’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler
Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust
Hearing on “The MATCH Monopoly: Evaluating the Medical Match Residency Antitrust Exemption”
May 14, 2025

Mr. Chairman, it is a little difficult to take seriously a hearing that Republicans bill as an effort to improve health care in this country when their colleagues on other committees are busy gutting Medicaid and other programs, which will have a devastating impact on the health of millions of Americans.

Apparently, Republicans think that what really ails our health care system is that low-income Americans, people with disabilities, and children have too much health care. That is the only explanation. Because, of course, it couldn’t just be a cynical ploy to fund massive tax cuts for billionaires on the backs of the most vulnerable among us.

And these same Republicans who claim they want to “Make America Healthy Again” have remained silent while the Trump Administration systematically dismantles our entire public health infrastructure. Under the leadership of America’s number-one vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theory promoter, Robert Kennedy, Jr., the Department of Health and Human Services has fired more than 20,000 experts, eliminated entire agencies, deleted important data sets and public health tracking tools, and cut or threatened to cut billions of dollars in grants for scientific research. 

At the same time, the Administration is waging an ideological war on institutions, such as universities and the National Institutes of Health, that develop the ground-breaking research that underpins most medical advances. The NIH alone has suffered a $1.8 billion cut and, by some estimates, as much as $2.7 billion. That will undoubtedly set back research into cancer treatments, infectious disease prevention, and much more by many years.

Meanwhile, Republicans cheer as the Administration’s immigration policies chase out foreign-born students and researchers and send a clear message to anyone abroad who might wish to bring their talents and innovation to our country—you are not welcome.

Taken collectively, these actions represent a dramatic effort to undermine, destroy, and limit health care research, access to critical health data, and access to care. The impact of these cuts will likely fall most deeply on marginalized communities, but we will all suffer the consequences.

That is why today’s hearing on the National Residency Matching Program seems beside the point. The health care system is facing an outright assault from within the Trump Administration and yet we are being called to examine the residency matching program.

This is not to say that there are no issues related to the Match worth exploring in due course. Any valid criticisms of the program warrant appropriate consideration—whether they concern salary, hours, working conditions, or other matters that call out for refinement. And, as part of that revisiting, we could account for collective bargaining, which has led to approximately 20% of the resident physician workforce becoming unionized.

But we should also recognize that the Match provides an effective system for placing more than 40,000 doctors a year across more than 6,500 residency programs and tracks throughout every region of the country that suit the needs of both students and hospitals alike.

It is important to remember that the Match was created in 1952 to solve problems in the placement process that were created by unfettered market competition. 

Before the Match was instituted, residency programs competed with each other to make offers earlier and earlier so as to preempt other programs. This resulted in students receiving limited-time offers as early as the beginning of their junior year of medical school, when they had limited exposure to clinical practice.

Attempts to delay the matching process by withholding student information until senior year led to exploding offers with extremely short fuses. This system served no one and the Match was created to address these market breakdowns. Over 70 years later, it is still largely working as intended—avoiding what would otherwise be chaos—even as the needs of candidates and residency programs have evolved.

While no system is perfect, many of the Republicans’ criticisms simply do not hold up under careful scrutiny. For example, Republicans have taken aim at foreign doctors who enter the Match, arguing that they are displacing American students. 

But statistics show that 99% of all U.S. medical school graduates enter residency or full-time practice in the country within six years of graduation. There is simply little evidence to suggest that foreign medical school graduates are taking slots from U.S. residents.

Rather than scapegoating immigrants, Republicans could address a real issue and that is the need for additional residency slots overall. But that would take an investment in new funding from the federal government, and we have already seen where the Republicans’ priorities lie.

Finally, if the Majority wishes to address flaws in the health care system, they need only look at the important work this subcommittee did under Democratic leadership. We examined issues related to consolidation and market concentration across the health care industry and we passed several pieces of legislation addressing the rising cost of prescription drugs. 

Many of these issues had bipartisan support and there is much we can do together. But instead, Republicans want to distract us from their disastrous health care policies with a hearing on a minor issue. We can do better.

I appreciate our witnesses for appearing today, I look forward to hearing from them, and I yield back the balance of my time.