Health Care: Expanding Access, Lowering Costs, Improving Coverage
Fix the car, or call the doctor and get your chest pains checked out? Pay that overdue rent, or fill the prescription for your kid’s insulin? No one should have to face such agonizing choices, and yet worries like these keep many First District residents up at night. That’s why I have long advocated for an affordable health care system that covers every single person. This issue hits home in our District, where many traditional occupations – such as farming and fishing – are dangerous and lack employer-provided health insurance.
I will bring to Washington a combination of dedication and expertise on this issue. I wrote Senator John Kerry’s health care platform for his presidential campaign, and for years was one of the Maryland General Assembly’s most vocal leaders on the issue. I partnered with a conservative Republican to enact the Family Planning Works Act to give all low-income women in Maryland access to free family planning services. Long before the federal Affordable Care Act extended a lifeline to millions of Americans, I worked to expand access right here in Maryland. The Kids First Act that I wrote enrolled thousands of children who qualified for care but had fallen through the cracks, and my Family Coverage Expansion Act made Maryland one of the first states to allow young people to stay on their family health plans until age 26. Both laws went on to serve as national models.
In Congress, I will push to finish the job of making access to affordable health care truly universal. I will seek to expand who qualifies for coverage, improve the benefits packages, and will work to bring down out-of-pocket costs through better subsidies and copayment rules. I also support allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies to reduce Rx prices. And I will prioritize our rural health care needs by focusing on ways to attract more and better health care providers to our region and promote policies that will keep rural hospitals and clinics open and thriving, ensuring First District residents don’t lose their access to care.
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