Better Care at Lower Costs
Dear Neighbor,

I’d like to take a moment to update you on some of the important work we’ve done in Congress during the first 200 days of our new Democratic majority. Specifically, I want to focus on the progress we’ve made in strengthening health care coverage and lowering health care costs for every American.

From the beginning, my Democratic colleagues and I have made health care a top priority in the House. On the first day of this Congress, House Democrats voted to throw the full legal weight of the House of Representatives into the fight against President Trump’s outrageous lawsuit to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. This lawsuit, Texas v. U.S., seeks to strike down every last benefit and protection that the Affordable Care Act provides to the American people -- including protections for 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Now, thanks to our action the House of Representatives has been able to intervene to argue on behalf of the American people in a case abandoned by the Trump Administration.

But our fight goes well beyond the courts. Since taking the majority, we have passed two pieces of legislation to shore up protections for people with pre-existing conditions, lower prescription drug prices, and crack down on junk health insurance plans: the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act and the Strengthening Health Care and the Lowering Prescription Drug Costs Act. I was proud to vote for both of these lifesaving bills. That Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to take up either of these bills or take any action to protect patients and bring down prescription drug costs is an outrage.

Before the ACA, the American health care system was plagued by junk insurance plans that discriminated against those with pre-existing conditions by forcing them to pay higher premiums or denying them any coverage at all. When we passed the Affordable Care Act, we fought to make sure that no family would have their lives upended by these useless, harmful plans again. But now, President Trump seems hellbent on reviving junk plans. Our legislation would reverse actions taken by President Trump to authorize the sale of junk plans. The bill also nullifies the guidance he issued allowing states to proliferate junk plans and undermine pre-existing condition protections.

It is painfully obvious to any American who uses a pharmacy that the prescription drug market is failing consumers and crushing families. 94 percent of popular brand name drugs doubled in price between 2005 and 2017, and out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries doubled from 2011 to 2015. While some may prefer to do nothing about this price inflation, the average American family, facing higher out-of-pocket costs at every turn for their medications, cannot afford inaction.

That’s why we passed a package of five measures to tackle skyrocketing prescription drug prices by going after the problem at its source: the pharmaceutical industry. Our legislation directly confronts Big Pharma by restricting or outlawing the unfair practices they use to keep drug prices high and prevent lower-cost generic versions of drugs from getting to market.

As summer comes to an end and we continue our work in Congress, please know that I will never give up the fight for better health care at lower costs.

Sincerely,
Gerald E. Connolly
Member of Congress


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