Healthcare

Let me be absolutely clear: Every single American should have access to affordable and quality health-care coverage.  I’m proud that the long-overdue reform of our health-care insurance system has finally taken place. The 111^th Congress, with my strong support, took the historic step of enacting legislation to provide health insurance to the uninsured, and to meaningfully improve the cost and coverage of health care for all Americans.

Currently, about 15 percent of the United States’ total population—more than 46 million Americans—have no health insurance at all.  More troubling, over seven million children and teenagers, 10 percent of all Americans under the age of 18, do not have health-care coverage.  In New York State alone, over 2.6 million people have no health insurance.  Without proper insurance, most children and adults do not have access to regular —prescribed as necessary— preventive and screening checks, and so they often delay obtaining treatment until they are seriously ill.  The lack of health coverage leads to lost days at work, more expensive emergency-room visits, and higher health-care bills for everyone.  In economic terms, the uninsured cost us all: On average, every American family pays an extra $1,100 annually to provide emergency-room health services to uninsured Americans.  Indeed, the American taxpayer already is the health insurer for these Americans—but only after they’re already sick, and the cost of that care is high. 

Unfortunately, our healthcare system needed more than just a nip or a tuck; it needed complete, reconstructive surgery.  Since 2000, health-insurance premiums have doubled, squeezing too many hard-working people’s budgets for coverage they can’t afford.  At the start of the 111^th Congress, as a vital first step, Congress expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by providing new funding to cover more children and make it easier for states to enroll eligible children in these programs.  I strongly supported expanding SCHIP to cover 11 million children, or about 4 million more kids than the program currently covers.  With my strong support, Congress passed healthcare legislation to require parity for mental-health benefits in group health plans and also prohibit health insurance companies and employers from discriminating against people on the basis of genetic test results. 

And, building on this success, Congress tackled the challenge of providing health insurance to every American.  I believe all Americans should have access to the same health-coverage choices as their Member of Congress.  To make health care available to all Americans, I have long proposed that Congress should find a way to utilize the concept of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program—the federal employees’ plan—which offers a choice of private health plans with basic benefit standards set by the federal government, not the big insurance companies.  The Act creates new, statewide “exchanges” that will work much the same way as the federal employees’ plan, which covers federal workers from Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices to food inspectors at the FDA to receptionists and everyone who works for the federal government.  The new exchanges will cover only uninsured individuals and employees of small companies that choose to participate.  Because of the competition among the several different plans in the exchanges, as well as the large risk-pools in the exchanges, costs will be contained.  Eventually, all health-insurance plans, including the plans participating in the proposed statewide exchanges will have to offer basic essential benefits, such as prescription-drug coverage and parity in mental health and substance-abuse disorder benefits. And to help counter public skepticism that the exchanges will be ignored by Congress and will provide substandard coverage, the new law requires all Members of Congress and their staffs to get our health insurance through these exchanges.

The previous Administration and the former leadership of the House of Representatives never acknowledged the moral or economic costs we pay every day for our failure to make health coverage affordable and accessible for everyone.   This legislation recognizes that more people with good coverage saves lives and saves costs; unequivocally asserts that people should not have to go bankrupt to pay their medical bills; and finally realizes that no one should have to go to an emergency room just to receive routine medical care. I am proud to have voted to make sure that health-care insurance reform is putting these essential principles into action.