“I will never stop fighting for health care you can count on – at any age.“ -- Senator Barbara A. Mikulski


Saving and strengthening Medicare

  • Closing the prescription drug donut hole
  • Ensuring seniors won’t have to pay more for recommended preventative care
  • Incentivizing higher quality value care, not volume care<
  • Finding solutions to extend Medicare’s solvency, so it doesn’t go broke in 2017

Ending punitive practices of insurance companies

  • Making sure insurance companies can’t deny coverage to anyone because of pre-existing conditions
  • Making sure your coverage can’t be canceled because of an unexpected health condition or mistake on your application
  • Requiring insurers to publicly disclose and justify outrageous premium increases
  • Requiring insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on direct health care services
  • Strengthening consumer protections to eliminate lifetime and annual caps
  • Requiring preventative care with no co-pay and no deductibles
  • Allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until age 26

Championing health care quality, prevention and integrative health to save lives and save money

  • Using best practices to reduce medical errors
  • Encouraging discharge planning to reduce hospital readmissions
  • Simplifying administrative procedures and facilitating enrollment into health and human services programs to save billions per year and reduce the hassle factor of health practitioners
  • Coordinating care and creating community health teams to save money and reduce chronic conditions

Fighting for universal access to health care

  • Expanding Medicaid to an additional 16 million Americans
  • Expanding coverage to 32 million Americans who were uninsured
  • Establishing health exchanges that will make health insurance more affordable and easier to purchase for small business and individuals
  • Providing tax credits to small businesses to make health care more affordable for them
  • Providing subsidies to employers who provide health insurance to early retirees not yet eligible for Medicare

A lifetime commitment to women’s health

  • Helped create the National Institutes of Health Office of Women’s Health to study women’s needs and health issues
  • Created the Mammogram Quality Standards Act and continues to fight for strong standards and yearly facility inspections
  • Ending gender discrimination by insurance companies, so being a woman is not considered a pre-existing condition
  • Requiring screening and preventative care -- including annual mammograms for women over 40 -- for no co-pay and no-deductible
  • Fighting to make maternity services part of essential benefits package
  • Allowing women to see their OB/GYN without a referral

 

 

How Health Reform Helps:
Maryland
Seniors
Small Businesses
Women