Rep. Cisneros Supports Legislative Package to Make Healthcare and Prescription Drugs More Affordable

WASHINGTON, June 25 -- Rep. Gilbert Cisneros, D-California, issued the following news release:

Representative Gilbert R. Cisneros, Jr. (CA-39) cosponsored The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act, a legislative package that will provide much needed relief by making healthcare and prescription drugs more affordable. The legislation also expands access to healthcare, strengthens protections for people with pre-existing conditions, reduces racial and ethnic health coverage disparities, and reverses the Trump Administration's harmful actions to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

"As a result of this pandemic, more and more Americans are concerned about high healthcare costs and prescription drug prices. It doesn't help that President Trump and Republican leaders are actively working to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and its protections," said Rep. Cisneros. "Congress must step up to protect and strengthen our healthcare laws. I'm proud to be a cosponsor of this life-saving bill to expand access to healthcare, protect people with pre-existing conditions, reduce racial health disparities, and lower prescription drug prices."

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act makes healthcare more affordable by lowering health insurance premiums with strengthened and expanded affordability assistance. Specifically, the legislation expands eligibility for premium tax credits beyond 400 percent of the federal poverty line and increases the size of tax credits for all income brackets. The legislation creates a national reinsurance program to help cover the costs of consumers with expensive medical conditions, which helps lower premiums and provides funds to states to help lower deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for everyone. It also offers funding to states to establish their own State-Based Marketplaces, which oftentimes have lower premiums.

The legislation also makes prescription drugs more affordable by empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and making those prices available to Americans with private health insurance. It will stop drug companies from ripping off Americans and charging them more than other countries for the same drugs. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that drugs subject to negotiation will see price reductions of up to 55 percent.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act also:

* encourages states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs to do so by renewing the ACA's original expanded federal match. If all states expanded Medicaid, about 4.8 million more Americans would be eligible for Medicaid, including an estimated 2.3 million people who are uninsured;

* reverses the Trump Administration's efforts to give states waivers to undermine pre-existing condition protections and weaken standards for essential health benefits;

* stops the expansion of junk insurance plans that allow insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, put consumers at financial risk, and drive up comprehensive insurance costs;

* restores critical outreach and enrollment funding that has been gutted by the Trump Administration and provide funding for navigators to assist consumers in signing up for healthcare;

* combats the maternal mortality epidemic, which continues to particularly impact Black and Native American people, by extending Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage to new mothers from the current 60 days post-partum to one year;

* further reduces racial and ethnic health inequities by expanding coverage and premium assistance to more Black and Hispanic Americans; and

* protects vulnerable populations from losing health coverage by ensuring that Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries receive a full 12 months of coverage once enrolled, protecting them from interruptions due to fluctuations in their income throughout the year.