Issue Position: Healthcare

Issue Position

Healthcare is a moral question that transcends politics -- it is a basic human right, not a privilege. 4.3 million Texans -- including over 600,000 children -- can't see a doctor, or when they do, they're so sick they have no choice but to go to the Emergency Room where the cost will be many times more expensive and the outcome will be worse.

When a mother forgoes a routine mammogram because she is uninsured, or a father ignores chronic pain because he didn't qualify for a subsidy to buy insurance, everyone's healthcare costs are likely to be greater in the long-term. We want our parents and our children to be healthy and live to their full potential. This is much more likely when they have access to the healthcare they need.

Steps that we should take together to transform healthcare include:

Improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by stabilizing our insurance markets. Guaranteeing continued payments for ACA subsidies that reduce enrollees' cost-sharing and reimbursing insurers for high-cost individuals.
Incentivizing insurers to participate in the exchanges, especially in underserved counties.
Expanding Medicaid to cover more Texans and protecting the Medicaid guarantee for vulnerable children, the disabled, and the elderly.
Lowering premiums and prescription drug costs by using the government's purchasing power to make healthcare more affordable for everyone.
Creating a public option on the exchanges so that Americans are guaranteed affordable coverage.
Achieving universal healthcare coverage-- whether it be through a single payer system, a dual system, or otherwise -- so that we can ensure everyone is able to see a provider when it will do the most good and will deliver healthcare in the most affordable, effective way possible.

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