Healthcare in the 110th Congress

Covering Children

I am working with my colleagues to expand health care for all Americans, starting with our children through the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). SCHIP is a bipartisan and cost-effective way to meet the health care needs of children and families struggling to make ends meet. Georgia's PeachCare covers 343,700 children today and Congress must expand that to cover the thousands of already eligible children who still lack health care.

In vetoing the bi-partisan compromise legislation, the President, and his Congressional allies who upheld his veto, opposed the will of the American people, including a wide-ranging coalition of doctors and other health care providers, disease advocacy groups, and children's advocates, such as the March of Dimes and Easter Seals.

SCHIP would have provided for the health and well-being of 10 million children by:

• protecting coverage for the more than 6 million children already enrolled, and enroll 4 million more children who are already eligible but lack health care;
• helping families of 10 million children avoid bankruptcy and foreclosure on their homes under the crushing weight of medical catastrophes; and
• saving taxpayer dollars that are now spent in hospital emergency rooms - the most expensive possible place to care for uninsured children.

Expanding SCHIP to more uninsured children is one of my top priorities.

Strengthening Medicare

For our seniors who rely on Medicare, Congress has a duty to pass legislation that helps those with the lowest incomes, and makes prevention more affordable. The House passed a bill that:

• ensures seniors have access to the doctors of their choice by stopping a scheduled 10 percent payment cut to doctors;
• reverses the Republican drive to privatize Medicare, phasing out the overpayments to private plans;
• makes health care more affordable and attainable for low-income seniors, including more than 164,000 of the poorest Medicare beneficiaries in Georgia, by expanding programs that assist beneficiaries with co-payments, deductibles, and prescription drug costs;
• makes preventive health check-ups - like tests, screenings, and vaccines - more affordable for seniors by eliminating co-payments and deductibles, saving lives and money; and
• works to eliminate disparities in health care under the Medicare program by providing Medicare with the tools to analyze and identify racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health care.

Too many seniors are still struggling to pay for their prescription drugs. You can be proud that one of the first acts of this Congress was to vote to give Medicare the ability to negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. The President has threatened to veto the legislation.