Oregon – U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden is leading a group of Senate Democrats in introducing new laws that will protect health care for millions of Americans and make insurance bought via the Affordable Care Act marketplace easier to use and less expensive. Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon is one of the co-sponsors of the idea. It comes at a time when many families are dealing with rising health care costs and higher insurance premiums.
The Restoring Patient Protections and Affordability Act is the name of the bill. It aims to make the ACA Health Insurance Marketplace stronger at a time when more than 20 million Americans rely on it for coverage. Those enrolled include small business owners, independent contractors, farmers and ranchers, and people who do not have access to affordable insurance through an employer.
Wyden noted that families across the country are having a harder time paying for health care as costs keep going up at an alarming rate.
“Americans today are waking up to a cold reality: health care costs are doubling, tripling, or even worse,” Wyden said. “While Trump is playing the blame game on America’s affordability crisis, Democrats are working day and night to extend ACA tax credits so that working families nationwide can access quality care without breaking the bank.”
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Merkley echoed those concerns, saying past Republican-led policies and regulatory changes increased costs for millions of Americans who rely on marketplace plans.
“Republicans exploded the cost of care for more than 20 million Americans who use the ACA exchange for health insurance—all to fund tax breaks for the already richest Americans,” said Merkley. “I refuse to let folks be left out in the cold—Congress needs to act now to fix the Republican health care crisis and lower the cost of health care for folks in Oregon and across the country.”
The law would do more than just prolong tax credits; it would also make a number of improvements to make things less confusing and easier to manage. It would extend the open enrollment period, bring back funds for enrollment navigators, and bring back a special enrollment time for people with low incomes. Insurance companies would also have to make it clearer to people who are already enrolled about changes to their eligibility, premiums, and enrollment deadlines.
The plan also wants to minimize out-of-pocket costs by undoing some of the insurance payment formulas that were put in place during the Trump administration. It also wants to bring back the “bronze to silver” program that used to assist lower premiums and cost-sharing. Extra rules would save people from getting surprise repayment costs when income projections change, and they would bring back automatic reenrollment to keep coverage from lapsing because of administrative problems.
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Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Tina Smith of Minnesota are all backing the bill. Wyden and Merkley have consistently called for action on making health care more affordable. In November, they publicly criticized government authorities for not doing something about the growing expenses that American families are facing.
The full text of the bill is here.
