House GOP Votes to Put Insurance Companies Back in Charge, Continues to Ignore Jobs
WASHINGTON – House Republicans pushed through yet another attempt to repeal historic patient protections for all Americans today, while at the same time voting to protect their own health insurance benefits. Instead of getting America back to work, House Republicans have tried more than 30 times to repeal, roll back or diminish the impact of the Affordable Care Act over the last 18 months.
“Americans are rightly asking House Republicans, where are the jobs? And where is your plan to stop outsourcing?” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) the senior Democratic member of the Education and the Workforce Committee and one of the lead House authors of the Affordable Care Act. “Those should be our priorities. Instead, House Republicans are preoccupied with taking away patient protections from the American people while keeping their own.”
House Republicans also voted unanimously against an amendment offered by Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) that would require members of Congress who vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act to forfeit their own taxpayer-subsidized health plan. In other words, every Republican voted to keep their own health insurance while taking health care coverage and patient protections away from millions of other Americans.
“If we write a law, we should live by it,” said Rep. Andrews. “We should understand what happens if repeal of the Affordable Care Act is successful. Members of Congress are protected against pre-existing conditions, but our constituents aren't. Members of Congress are permitted to have our sons and daughters on our policies until they're 26, but our constituents can't. Members of Congress can't be charged more for premiums because of their age or gender, but our constituents can.”
Starting in 2014 under that Affordable Care Act, members of Congress and their staff will get their health insurance through the insurance exchange, just like Americans without health coverage or employees in small businesses that choose to offer insurance.
Since the Supreme Court ruled that the historic health reform law is constitutional earlier this month, the American people are saying that it is time to move on and get back to the other important issues of the day. According to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of respondents said that it is time for Washington Republicans to “stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems.” And, today, the Washington Post reported that, according to their latest poll, only 20 percent of all registered voters want to take away new patient protections from the American people.
The Affordable Care Act is already helping millions of Americans:
- Up to 17 million children can no longer be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
- 6.6 million young adults are now receiving insurance through their parents’ plans.
- 5.3 million seniors have already saved $3.7 billion on their prescription drugs.
- 105 million Americans no longer face lifetime limits on their insurance coverage.
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