Health Care
House Democrats are committed to expanding access to quality, affordable health care coverage, strengthening protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and lowering prescription drug prices and the cost of health care overall.
Under President Biden and Congressional Democrats, the uninsured rate is at an all-time low. While Republicans vote against legislation to lower health care costs, House Democrats are working to bring down the overall costs of health care and increase access to health care coverage.
With the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, House Democrats took direct action to reduce health care costs for millions of Americans. For the first time, Medicare will be able to negotiate prescription drug prices for high-cost drugs. The law also caps out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients at $2,000 annually and establishes a $35 cap for a month’s supply of insulin. The Inflation Reduction Act also protects progress made under President Biden to expand access to quality, affordable health care coverage by continuing the expanded premium tax credits originally passed in the American Rescue Plan, which lowered health care premiums for millions of working families.
This built upon the Affordable Care Act – enacted by President Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2010 – that has put American families in control of their own health care and ended a system that put profits ahead of patients. Since its enactment, 35 million Americans have gained access to quality, affordable health coverage. Americans with pre-existing conditions can no longer be discriminated against by insurance companies. Parents can now keep their children on their insurance plans up to age twenty-six. Insurance companies are no longer allowed to put annual or lifetime limits on coverage or drop people when they get sick. Additionally, thanks to the law, Medicare costs – from premiums and deductibles to overall program spending – have slowed to well below the levels projected before the law passed.
These reforms were crucial, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic struck but more action was needed. That’s why House Democrats worked to enact legislation right away - without any Republican support - to ensure that testing, treatment, and vaccinations for COVID-19 would be covered with no out-of-pocket costs to Americans.
House Democrats remain committed to the goal of affordable, accessible health care for all.
Last week, Republicans decided to shut down the government and threatened default on our nation’s financial obligations all over their obsession with delaying or defunding the Affordable Care Act. Now some Republicans are seeing the error of their ways:
More evidence that the American people are fed up with Republicans shutting down government as a failed tactic to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
“Only 28 percent have a favorable view of the GOP, the worst rating Gallup has ever registered for a political party. “
Another day, another consequence of the GOP shutdown. The Wall Street Journal reports the shutdown is making it harder to detect and track a salmonella outbreak that’s putting the health of Americans at risk:
MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC WHIP
On Tuesday, House Republicans shut down the government for the first time in 17 years over their destructive obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act. After four days of the GOP shutdown, House Republicans are continuing to play games; nothing they have considered on the Floor will re-open the government. Democrats have already compromised by agreeing to the Republican funding level.
With thousands of federal workers locked out of their offices, national monuments closed to visitors, children denied treatment for diseases, and veterans unable to get full access to services (the list goes on…), it’s amazing that Republicans are keeping the government shut down over the Affordable Care Act. Some highlights from a CNN interview this morning:
"[T]his piecemeal approach is going to be dragged out over a long period of time and you've just done a litany of adverse consequences as a result of shutting this government down that apparently our Republican friends did not anticipate.
With the Republican strategy of shutting down the government over the Affordable Care Act facing sharp criticism across America, here’s confirmation that their strategy doesn’t get any more popular when it comes to paying our nations bills, according to a new poll by CNN/ORC International:
"[The Affordable Care Act] was hard-fought. We now see the first day in my state literally tens of thousands of people were signing up… . They were so excited about having, finally, access to affordable quality health care and have insurance.
“Today, with the beginning of open enrollment for health insurance exchanges in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, Americans across the country are now able to shop, compare, and sign up for insurance plans that offer real choices and competitive pricing. As a result, millions of uninsured Americans will be able to access affordable coverage, many for the first time.
Beginning today, millions of Americans — and hundreds of thousands of Marylanders — who could not afford health insurance, or didn't have access to it, will finally be able to sign up for coverage through health marketplaces like the Maryland Health Connection.