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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.

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.  


Health Care Related

“Once again, Republicans are playing politics with women’s health care.  This bill, which would place new restrictions on women seeking reproductive health options in the District of Columbia, is the latest attempt to drive Americans apart on wedge issues at a time when we ought to be coming together to tackle the challenges we face together as a nation.  It is yet another messaging bill that would never pass the Senate or be signed into law. 

“Forty-seven years ago today, Medicare brought the promise of affordable health care for Americans over age 65.  Since that day, Democrats have defended that promise and worked to strengthen Medicare for future generations.  The landmark Affordable Care Act has lowered out-of-pocket costs to beneficiaries by making a range of preventive care services free, and it increased the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. 

“This morning it was announced that over one million Medicare beneficiaries have saved money this year thanks to the Affordable Care Act, with the average senior saving $622 so far this year on prescription drugs.  Affordable Care Act provisions, including closing the Part D ‘donut hole’ coverage gap, are resulting in real benefits and savings for seniors.  More than 5.2 million seniors and others on Medicare have now saved a total of $3.9 billion on prescription drugs since the Affordable Care Act first came into effect. 

“Today’s report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office makes it very clear:  the Affordable Care Act is controlling the growth of health care costs and contributing to deficit reduction.  The CBO report attests that House Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal health reform would leave an additional 30 million Americans uninsured and increase deficits $109 billion over the next ten years as well as an even greater amount – roughly 0.5% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion – over the following decade. 

Republicans have already wasted $50 million of taxpayer money, but don’t let that stop them from wasting even more time and taxpayer dollars attempting to roll back patient protections and put insurance companies back in control of health care.

From Politico:

Just in case you missed it yesterday (or you wanted to read about the law House Republicans have wasted $50 million of taxpayer money in fruitless attempts to repeal), we here in the Democratic Whip Press Office wanted to pass along this op-ed from the New York Times entitled “Five Obamacare Myths.”

MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC WHIP

To highlight our commitment to creating jobs, House Democrats joined me this week in announcing new legislation added to our Make It In America plan, a comprehensive jobs package that invests in manufacturing in order to create jobs and grow our economy.  The new list of Make It In America bills focuses on strengthening our infrastructure so businesses can

A look at the morning news highlights what we’ve been saying all along: Republicans spent yet another week on a political show vote to take away health care benefits and patient protections – wasting taxpayer dollars and time that could have been spent on growing the economy and putting Americans back to work.

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) discussed House Democrats' Make It In America jobs plan and the Republican vote to take away health care protections for millions of Americans on CNN, MSNBC and FOX. See below for excerpts of the interviews and links to the videos.

After more than 30 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you begin to hear a repeat of the same arguments.  So tonight, after two days of debate, we're going to leave you with the craziest one we heard this time around, courtesy of Majority Leader Eric Cantor.  Of all the claims Republicans have made against health care reform, this is one of the more remarkable ones: