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Health Care

 

 

 

The Congresswoman visits the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center

OVERVIEW

I know firsthand how being able to access affordable health care isn’t a political issue, but a deeply personal one for every family. My late husband Paul waged a long, courageous fight against cancer and during that time, our family had the benefit of excellent care from extraordinarily able and dedicated professionals. I understand the fear and helplessness so many feel when faced with an illness in their family. But I have also experienced the hope our health care system can offer and shudder to think what our experience might have been if our family had been uninsured. I believe that every American deserves access to the same level of high quality care that my family received.

During the national debate over health care reform, I engaged in thousands of conversations with District residents and heard repeatedly that health care costs were hurting businesses and families across Massachusetts. Citizens and experts alike agreed that if left unchecked, health care costs were going to bankrupt our country.

I supported the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the landmark health care reform legislation signed into law by President Obama in 2010, because it was designed to improve the quality of our health care system, provide expanded access to care, and lower the cost of health insurance. Since October 2013, more than 11 million people have gained health insurance.

While I believe the law can and should continue to be improved, I do not support efforts to repeal the ACA. We cannot afford to go back to the days when big insurance companies had the power to decide what care Americans could receive, allowing them to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, cancel coverage when people got sick, and placing limits on the amount of care people could get, all the while leaving families and businesses struggling to cope with steadily rising premiums.

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to bring down health care costs for Massachusetts residents and small businesses; prohibit unfair insurance company practices, such as denials of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, rescissions of coverage, and annual limits on coverage; and strengthen Medicare by closing the “donut hole,” reducing the cost of preventative care, and adding years to Medicare’s solvency.

As with any undertaking of this magnitude, the ACA is not perfect, and I have consistently demonstrated an openness to making appropriate improvements. For example, I was one of the first Democrats to support repealing onerous 1099 reporting requirements to help small businesses, and I have voted for several changes that I thought helped refine and improve the law, including voting to repeal the medical device tax when the cost of the repeal was offset.

Since its enactment in 2010, the benefits of the ACA have become increasingly apparent:

  • More than 11 million Americans have signed up for health care in the ACA exchanges
  • Millions of small businesses are receiving tax credits to provide insurance to their workers.
  • Recent college graduates who may not have access to insurance can remain on their parents’ health plans until the age of 26. For example, I received an email from a District resident who told me that his 19 year old daughter is working two jobs and is now able to get health insurance because of the new health care reform law.
  • Senior citizens who fall into the donut hole—more than 83,000 of whom live in Massachusetts—are starting to see it closed and have already received checks to help them afford needed medications in the meantime. In 2016, beneficiaries saved more than $1,000 on average.
  • Men and women have access to a number of free preventive services, like mammograms, and colonoscopies without being charged a deductible, co-pay, or coinsurance fee. In 2016, more than 3.3 million people in Massachusetts, including over 1.4 million women, were able to access these services.
  • Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, cancel coverage when people get sick, and place limits on the amount of care people can get. Nationwide, up to 129 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions would lose protections if this coverage is repealed.
  • Consumers have saved an estimated $9 billion on health insurance premiums since the passage of health care reform, thanks to provisions requiring that insurance companies must reveal how much they actually spend on health care and how much they spend on profits and administrative costs such as salaries and marketing. If insurers do not spend at least 80 percent (or 85 percent for the biggest insurers) of premium dollars on actual health care benefits and quality improvement measures, they must refund consumers the difference. The ACA also improved Medicare by providing free preventative and wellness care, improving primary and coordinated care, enhancing nursing home care, and strengthening the Medicare trust fund, extending its solvency from 2017 to 2026. In 2015, more than 39 million Medicare beneficiaries took advantage of free access to preventive services, such as high-blood-pressure screenings and cancer screenings, allowing doctors to better identify and treat health problems at earlier stages. Repealing the Affordable Care Act would eliminate these benefits for 983,582/over 980,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Massachusetts and cause the Medicare hospital trust fund to become insolvent in just six years.

Since the passage of the ACA and, in particular, since President Trump has been in office, we have seen many efforts to repeal the ACA. From the beginning of the Trump Administration, whether it was the House Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) in March 2017, the House Republicans’ second attempt at AHCA in May 2017, or Senators Graham (R-SC) and Cassidy’s (R-LA) bill to repeal the ACA in September 2017, it is clear that the fight to protect the ACA is not over. These proposals would have raised health care costs for the middle class, eviscerated families’ coverage, and stripped awaycoverage for millions of Americans. Across the U.S., people realized these were bad deals and made their voices heard.I believe their engagement was one of the primary reasons that Republicans were unable to pass damaging health care legislation.

The fight to protect the ACA is far from over. Health insurance is complicated, and deductibles and premiums are often too high. But we should be working to fix those problems, not repealing the ACA and making the problems worse. I remain in strong support of common sense, targeted modifications to the ACA, but I will not support any across-the-board repeal of patients’ rights that will put insurance companies back in charge of our health care and add to our ballooning deficit.

COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS

Investments from the Affordable Care Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have led to the expansion of Community Health Centers in Massachusetts and across the country. This is good news for the Third District where we benefit from high quality care in Community Health Centers in Clinton, Gardner, Fitchburg, Lowell, and Lawrence.

According to the National Association of Community Health Centers, 27 million patients nationwide in more than 10,400 communities utilize the services of community health centers. In the Third District, our community health centers serve 123,723 patients at 33 sites, leveraging over $15.6 million in federal investments.

These centers provide vital services for the most vulnerable among us. As health insurance premiums continue to rise, the Centers could see even more use by those unable to afford coverage. More than 1/3 of those who currently use the Centers are uninsured. Roughly 71%live in poverty and 92%are considered low income. More widely, they save the health care system $17 billion a year.

The Community Health Center Fund (CHCF), which provides 70% of the funding for Community Health Centers, expired for more than 4 months, between September 2017 and February 2018. I forcefully called my colleagues' attention to this shortfall, and spoke on the House Floor about how a reduction in funding would affect the Third District. You can view my speech on the importance of funding community health centers here.

I also led a letter, that was joined by 154 of my House colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi urging them to work with Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan manner to reauthorize the Community Health Centers Fund (CHCF) for five years. You can read a copy of the letter here.

Thankfully, the two-year budget agreement, which passed Congress on February 9, 2018, included $7 billion for Community Health Centers over two years. And in March, I voted for a government funding bill that provides an additional $300 million in support to community health centers for this fiscal year. That bill became law on March 23, 2018. I

I have also been able to use my role in Congress to advocate for more funding for Teaching Health Centers, including the one located at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. Teaching Health Centers train primary care physicians who then go out to serve in low-income areas and the funding will allow these organizations to train more doctors and dentists and address a growing need nationwide. In 2015, I led a bipartisan effort to include the Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education program in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, which was signed into law by President Obama. The law funded Teaching Health Centers for two years.

Last year, I partnered across the aisle with Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) to co-lead a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee encouraging them to once again reauthorize the Teaching Health Centers program for at least three years. Nearly 100 of my House colleagues joined the letter, a strong showing of support for community health centers. I also continued my advocacy for the program though a bill I introduced with Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers extending funding for the program. After my efforts and the efforts of many on both sides of the aisle, legislation extending the Teaching Health Center program for two years became law in in February 2018.

I will continue to advocate for Community Health Centers during my last year in Congress so they can continue to provide vital health care services to their communities.

Links to some Community Health Centers in the Third District:

WOMEN’S HEALTH CARE

Before health care reform, women on average paid higher premiums than men (a practice known as “gender rating”). A 25-year-old woman could expect to pay up to 84% more than a man --even for a health plan that excluded maternity coverage.

More than 60% of health care plans charged a 40-year-old woman who doesn’t smoke more than a 40-year-old man who does.

Furthermore, before the passage of health care reform, it was still legal in many states for insurance companies to deny a woman coverage if she had been the victim of domestic violence.

I was proud to join my fellow women colleagues in raising these issues and others that specifically affect women during the debate over health care reform.

During the national debate on health care reform, I served on the House Budget Committee, one of the committees responsible for reviewing the health care reform bill before it could become law. During our review, I introduced an amendment to prohibit insurance companies from denying full or partial coverage to women, including maternity coverage, for so-called “pre-existing conditions” such as domestic violence, pregnancy, or a medical history of cesarean sections.

My Republican colleagues joined me in supporting this motion, acknowledging that my amendment was crafted “fairly” and “addresses a significant problem,” and would improve health care for women and families. The motion passed unanimously.

Since the ACA was signed into law, I have been working with my colleagues to make sure that health insurance companies cover comprehensive preventative services for women without requiring patients to pay copayments. These services include annual well-woman preventive care visits, gestational diabetes screening and counseling, and screening for domestic violence.

ADDITIONAL HEALTH CARE RESOURCES FOR MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS

 

HELPFUL PHONE NUMBERS

Marketplace Call Center: 1-800-318-2596 (The Call Center can also submit ‘casework’ if they cannot resolve your issue.)

  • TTY Users can call 1-855-889-4325

Member Services Line: 1-877-623-6765

Multilingual Health Insurance helpline (04/26/1702:45 PMET )
Multilingual Health Insurance helpline

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