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.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 165 million Americans with private insurance and 48 million seniors and disabled Americans with Medicare are experiencing better coverage and enjoying lower health care costs or seeing costs grow more slowly.
The Republican budget introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan today is a repeat of last year’s budget: it once again ends the Medicare guarantee while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy. It slashes investments in innovation, education, and infrastructure, which puts our economic recovery at risk and threatens American jobs. It does not reduce the deficit in a responsible way, instead placing the burden of deficit reduction onto seniors, the middle class, working families, and the most vulnerable by refusing to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute.
Two years after health care reform was signed into law, seniors are already seeing the benefits: lower costs, improved quality, and additional benefits. Democrats remain committed to strengthening and preserving Medicare for current and future beneficiaries, while Republicans continue to call for – and vote for – taking away these new benefits, ending the Medicare guarantee, and raising costs for seniors.
Two years ago this month, President Obama signed health care reform into law, providing Americans with new patient protections and greater health care freedoms. While Republicans have voted 14 times to repeal patient protections and put insurance companies back in control of health care without a comprehensive plan of their own, Democrats are committed to protecting the benefits health care reform provides Americans.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll out today shows Republican efforts to roll back new health care freedoms, restrict women’s health care access, end the Medicare guarantee, and raise health care costs for seniors still aren’t popular with the American people:
This Groundhog Day, the American people may be feeling a sense of Déjà vu. House Republicans are once again gearing up to push their wildly unpopular plan to end the Medicare guarantee and raise costs for seniors. And like Bill Murray in a certain movie, they might find themselves reliving the same painful scenario over and over again.
Over the past year, House Republicans have claimed over and over again that their focus is on jobs and the economy. Unfortunately, their record doesn’t match up with their rhetoric.
As an early educator, my wife Judy devoted her career to helping provide children with the opportunities, care, and support they deserve. Before she passed away in 1997, Judy had already impacted the lives of so many children in Prince George's County, Maryland, where she oversaw the county's early education programs.
In a decision that affirmed the right of every American woman to privacy and choice, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Roe v. Wade thirty-nine years ago this Sunday. I join in marking this anniversary, and I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose while strengthening education programs and access to contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies. I am proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with women’s health and privacy advocates in continuing to defend the constitutional right Roe v. Wade confirmed.
One year ago today, Republicans passed a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act and roll back the new freedoms for all Americans that the health care reform law provides. Since then, Republicans have voted fourteen times to repeal patient protections and put insurance companies back in control of health care, and have not put forward a new plan of their own to rein in costs and protect patients – despite their own promises to do so in their Pledge to America and a resolution instructing committees to report legislation replacing the Affordable Care Act.