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Health & Fitness

Making Healthcare Better for Middle Class Families

The time for political hand wringing is over.

Healthcare reform is about helping middle class families. Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, children were denied coverage for urgent treatments, leaving parents to pay out of pocket. Seniors in the Medicare "Donut Hole" coverage gap saw their budgets explode with the rising cost of prescription drugs, and a new generation of young people set out into the job market without crucial healthcare coverage. I joined my colleagues in the House to fix this problem.

The time for political hand wringing is over. The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, and we now need to put partisanship aside and implement the benefits and patient protections that this law delivers for middle class families on Long Island.

Many of my colleagues in the House of Representatives are plotting repeal, and my opponent has indicated he supports repeal as well, without offering any plan to replace it.

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It's clear that the law is already working for families and businesses in New York’s First District, by the numbers:

4,700: The number of young adults who are able to stay on their parents’ insurance, making sure that while they’re getting started in their careers, they don’t have to worry about losing everything from getting sick.

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9,400: The number of seniors who received a prescription drug discount, with an average discount of $710 per senior.

81,000: The number of seniors who received preventative services without having to pay co-pays, coinsurance or deductibles.

710: The number of small businesses that received tax credits to maintain and expand their healthcare coverage offerings to employees.

9,000: The number of children with pre-existing conditions who can no longer be denied coverage.

$86.5 million: The rebate 1 million in New York State will receive from insurance companies that spent more than twenty percent of their costs on executive pay and marketing, instead of medical care. It works out to an average of $138 per family.

We shouldn’t go back. We shouldn’t let free riders make the rest of us foot the bill when they get sick. We shouldn’t tell the parents of 9,000 children in this district that if their child gets sick, expensive treatment is going to come out of their pocket.  We shouldn't leave behind seniors who struggle on fixed incomes to keep up with soaring drug prices. We shouldn’t deny our young adults, who are just starting their careers, access to good, affordable healthcare. And we should never again let insurance companies drop coverage when a patient gets sick.

This law is about eliminating barriers between doctors and patients, and it’s about making healthcare coverage better for all families.

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