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.
The vote in the Senate today on the Affordable Care Act is a distraction from what the American people want us to focus on – jobs. This vote shows that Republicans are not only ignoring Americans’ priorities, but are trying to put insurance companies back in charge of American families’ health care. The American people do not support repealing critical patient protections in the new law, such as ending discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions, making prescription drugs more affordable for America’s seniors, and allowing young Americans to stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26
Today’s court ruling is one of many different district court rulings on this matter and represents one individual step in an ongoing judicial process. I am confident that when the legal process has been concluded, the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act will be upheld.
Today’s deficit report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows our deficit is at an unsustainable level, clearly demonstrating the need for bipartisan action to put our country’s fiscal house in order. It is encouraging that the CBO’s forecast for economic growth has improved since its last report in August. Our economy is expected to continue growing--a positive outlook due, in part, to the Democratic policies that have helped put Americans back to work.
President Obama delivered a compelling vision of how we can work together to address America’s challenges. While our economy is on the road back to health, we know we still have a long way to go—and tonight, the president discussed a strategy for getting us there.
The correct answer is D! Despite promises that they would govern differently than they did in the past and start cutting the deficit immediately, the “new” Republicans have returned to the same fiscally irresponsible policies as the old Republicans by breaking their promise to cut spending by $100 billion and more importantly by not putting forward a real plan to reduce the deficit.
Yesterday, House Republicans voted to undo Americans’ hard-won freedom to control their own health care. Today, they passed a largely empty resolution, which demonstrates Republicans’ lack of seriousness when it comes to bringing down premiums, ensuring that all Americans have health coverage, and reducing the deficit. Rather than debate a real health care plan—which they have had ample time to develop—Republicans passed a resolution declaring their support for 12 vague health care ‘goals.’ But they took no steps to ensure that those goals would ever result in real health care legislation and set no deadlines for such legislation to be passed. Rather than a fresh start, today’s resolution is just another example of how Republicans have failed to make the tough choices necessary to reform our health care system.
Last year, Democrats acted to reform health care in America: to make it easier for small businesses to cover their employees; to take important steps to bring down costs; and to stop insurance company abuses that bankrupt sick Americans or deny them coverage.
As a result of changes in direct spending and revenues, CBO expects that enacting H.R. 2 would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012–2019 period by a total of roughly $145 billion (on the basis of the original estimate), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. Adding two more years (through 2021) brings the projected increase in deficits to something in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes.
The health reform law included key consumer protections to help keep insurance companies from getting between patients and the care they need. It expands the number of people with access to a physician by: (1) making affordable, quality insurance available to all Americans; (2) increasing the numbers of doctors and other medical providers, especially primary care providers, in the workforce; and (3) expanding funding available to community health centers.
While Americans are still facing tough times, employment is not in decline. Since the health reform law passed, the private sector has added jobs every month and the economy has grown. The Republican Patient’s Rights Repeal Bill would not only raise costs for individuals and businesses, but it would hurt our economy as well. The health reform law will also lower the deficit by over $230 billion this decade and by over $1.2 trillion in the following decade, according to a recent CBO analysis.