Issue Position: Affordable Health Care
Issue Position
In March 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, groundbreaking legislation that improves health care for seniors, cracks down on the insurance companies, and ensures that millions more Americans can access health coverage.
We don't have to look any further than our own state to see what would happen if we did nothing to reform health care--huge premium increases like those that Anthem has demanded forcing more and more individuals and small businesses to go without coverage.
Here's what the health care reform legislation does:
*Improves health care for 225,000 Maine seniors by closing the donut hole, reducing the price of prescription drugs and covering check ups
*In 2010, Medicare beneficiaries who went into the donut hole received a $250 rebate. After that they will receive a pharmaceutical manufacturers' 50% discount on brand-name drugs, increasing to a 75% discount on brand-name and generic drugs to close the donut hole by 2020.
*The legislation requires free annual checkups and no out of pocket expense for things like cancer and diabetes screening.
*Strengthens Medicare and keeps it solvent
*The legislation will add 12 years to Medicare solvency.
*Cracks down on the worst practices of the insurance industry like discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and cancelling your insurance policies after you get sick.
*Makes it easier for small businesses and working Americans to afford health insurance and helps ensure that no one will go bankrupt because of medical expenses.
*Provides cost sharing assistance to working Americans to help them afford insurance.
*Creates the largest health care tax break in history to make it easier for small businesses and individuals to afford coverage.
*Lets individuals and small businesses buy coverage from an "exchange" so they can buy it the way big employers do.
*Is fully paid for and reduces the deficit by roughly $200 billion in the next 10 years, and by over a trillion dollars in the decade after that.
*Bill is paid for in part by cutting out waste, fraud, and abuse from the health care system and asking wealthy Americans to pay their fare share of the Medicare tax.
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