Affordable Healthcare
Healthcare
No one should go bankrupt because of medical costs and life saving health care needs. Jim will continue to support all efforts to ensure Americans and Connecticut residents have access to quality and affordable healthcare. He will also continue to fight to protect Social Security and Medicare, and will not support any attempt to privatize Social Security.
With changing demographics and rising health care costs, we must work to make Medicare sustainable for future generations.
Preserving Social Security presents only modest long-term challenges. Jim will work – and has voted – to put both on a path to long-term stability. If you are retired, or nearing retirement, you will get the benefits you earned.
But Congress must make sure that the children and grandchildren of today’s seniors look to the future and know they can expect a secure retirement, too. Jim have consistently urged his colleagues in Congress to get to work now to keep both Medicare and Social Security strong.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA)
The ACA represents progress millions of Americans and thousands of Connecticut residents who didn’t have insurance before. We have room to improve the ACA, and our goal should be to ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable healthcare.
To achieve this goal, we need bipartisan support to make necessary adjustments to the ACA so it works better for everyone.
Jim’s Connecticut constituents have benefited from health care reform: receiving free preventive services, seeing prescription drug costs decrease and keeping young adults on their family insurance plans until age 26.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act:
- Over 208,000 Connecticut residents enrolled in an affordable health insurance plan through Access Health CT. Many families have received instant premium tax credits to make coverage even more affordable.
- Young adults up to age 26 can stay on a parent’s health insurance plan. Almost 25,000 Connecticut residents between the ages of 21 and 25 have remained insured.
- Insurance companies must now provide certain preventive services for free. Since the law’s enactment, Connecticut residents have been provided with 945,000 free preventive services, including mammograms, well-child visits, flu shots, and colonoscopies. Insurance policies must also include coverage for other essential health benefits, such as ambulance care, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity care, mental health, prescription drugs, rehabilitative, laboratory services, and pediatric services.
- Insurance companies must now spend at least 80% of the premiums they collect on health care for those they insure.
- The Medicare Prescription Drug “Donut Hole” is closing. Before the new health care law passed, some seniors faced a gap in prescription drug coverage through Medicare, which forced them to pay thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs. The health care reform law is closing that gap. The “donut hole” will be closed completely by 2020.
- Insurance companies can no longer impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage. Over 1.3 million Connecticut residents no longer have to worry about their coverage running out when they need it most.
- Women can no longer be charged more for health care than men.
- Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to the 1.5 million non-elderly Connecticut residents – including 190,000 children – who have some type of pre-existing health condition.
