Health Care

I have always supported increased federal investment in medical research to increase our knowledge about the human body and develop better treatments for all kinds of health problems.

I worked with other Members of Congress to double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health, for example. Similarly, I have supported increased federal funding for the Centers for Disease Control, Community Health Centers, and other important public health programs, as well as for training for medical professionals.

I am also a strong supporter of federal assistance for Americans who can’t afford the health care they need. With health insurance premiums for a family costing close to $20,000 a year, it’s clear that millions of Americans can’t afford them, even with one or even two people working full-time.

I sold insurance for many years before I was elected to Congress, including health insurance. It gave me a pretty thorough understanding about how insurance works – and about the tough financial choices facing many households and businesses.

Serving in Congress has allowed me to see first-hand the challenges facing the federal government in regulating the insurance industry, and I’ve helped pass a number of incremental health care reform bills over the years – bills that attempted to address specific problems. That experience eventually led me to the conclusion that our crazy patchwork system of health insurance was inefficient, ineffective, and unfair – and that the best health insurance system for our country would be a single-payer plan like HR 676, the Medicare for All Act. Consequently, I have been a cosponsor of this legislation for a number of years. Click here to read about single-payer health insurance. While a majority of Americans support switching to a single-payer system today, there simply haven’t been enough supporters in Congress to establish a single-payer system. 

Consequently, in 2009 and 2010, I supported enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Obamacare”) because I believed it would expand comprehensive, affordable health insurance coverage to millions of Americans and end abusive insurance company practices like discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.

Despite constant criticism, the ACA has achieved those goals – more than 20 million Americans have health insurance today as a result of the ACA, and common insurance industry abuses have been dramatically reduced. 

Supporters of the ACA never thought it was perfect, but we understood that it would improve the existing system. We thought at the time that Congress would monitor the bill’s implementation and fix the problems that arose, or became evident, as it was rolled out. 

What we didn’t anticipate was the relentless, unending partisan opposition to the ACA – and Congressional Republicans’ insistence to this day on repealing and replacing it. That opposition has included court cases and Executive Branch action, as well as legislation, to undermine the ACA. Consequently, this partisan opposition has created instability in the ACA Marketplaces, contributed to higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs for consumers, and made it harder for people to enroll in health insurance plans through the ACA.

Click on the links below for additional information about the national debate over health insurance reform:

Why the ACA was Needed

 

The fight’s not over – the 2017 and 2018 budgets proposed by President Trump and approved by House Republicans would cut Medicare by nearly half a trillion dollars and cut Medicaid by nearly a trillion dollars. 

 

I will continue to fight to ensure that affordable, high-quality health care is available to all Americans.