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.
Yesterday, House Republicans voted in lockstep to deem the Republican budget passed. Their budget makes the wrong choices—ending Medicare and raising costs for seniors while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
This week, the House passed legislation that provides our Armed Forces the resources they need to keep our country safe and support our military families. I voted for this legislation, but I have concerns about some of the parts of the bill that don’t help make our nation safer, including reopening the issue of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” an overly broad expansion of the President’s powers to use military force, and limiting the tools in our tool box to fight terrorism...
After this week’s stunning electoral upset in Western New York, Republicans have gone into overdrive trying to defend their misguided budget plan to end Medicare as we know it and more than double costs for seniors.
Last night, voters in Western New York sent a clear message that the Republican plan to end Medicare as we know it is the wrong choice. But today, Senate Republicans chose to ignore that message and instead voted for the Republican budget that does not balance and puts insurance company bureaucrats in charge of seniors’ health care – a move that will more than double seniors’ health care costs.
This week, Senate Republicans vote on the Republican budget that makes the wrong choices for how to address our nation’s deficits: it ends Medicare as we know it, raises costs for seniors, and gives tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
But though Hoyer called for compromise, he minced no words calling out Republicans for their refusal to support using increases in tax revenue, achieved by tax reform, to help close the deficit gap. He suggested that Republicans still believe that tax cuts are ‘a fiscal and economic cure-all,’ despite the economic growth experienced under higher tax rates during the Clinton administration and the assertions of economists that the Bush administration’s tax policy is a major driver of the national debt.
Today’s Trustees Reports show that the Social Security and Medicare programs have the resources to meet their obligations well into the next decade, but have taken a hit due to economic conditions. The programs will be solvent into the next decade, due in part to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, which strengthened Medicare by taking significant steps to constrain cost growth through innovative delivery system and payment reforms that will increase efficiency, improve quality, and generate long-term savings for both beneficiaries and the government. According to the Trustees, Medicare’s financial outlook was substantially improved by this critical law.
After four months, its clear Republicans don’t share the American people’s priorities by failing to focus on jobs and making the wrong choices on the deficit.
After four months in the House majority, Republicans have yet to put forward a jobs agenda. But one partisan priority has taken an inordinate amount of their time: voting on legislation to undo the Affordable Care Act (ACA), even though they know that repeal will not become law. House Republicans already took a largely symbolic vote to repeal the ACA—now they are taking another series of votes to defund more of its provisions.
When House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) heard Republicans were going to hold a vote on the extremely conservative Republican Study Committee budget, a lightbulb turned on in his head.