Denham was wrong on healthcare bill; we can provide a better path

On May 4, Rep. Jeff Denham voted for the so-called American Health Care Act, a terrible bill that removed protections for pre-existing conditions and will take $880 billion from Medicaid and give it away in tax cuts, mostly to millionaires. The University of California estimates that 100,000 people in our district alone would have lost health insurance under that bill.

It would be one thing if Denham were honest with his constituents about what he clearly believes – that healthcare should only be available to those with the money to pay for it. But, as we saw when he told constituents just days before the vote that he opposed the bill, he says one thing here and then votes the Republican party line in D.C. – even when it means devastating cuts to programs that are vital to the health of our communities.

Denham talks about our region’s challenges finding doctors willing to come practice in an area with over 40 percent Medi-Cal coverage. He even recently proposed a bill to spend $57 million to expand local residency programs – less than 0.01 percent of his proposed cuts to Medicaid.

This trick won’t fool us.

The very reason we don’t have enough doctors in the Central Valley who accept Medi-Cal is because of repeated efforts by Denham and the Republican Party to roll back Medicaid funding.

Instead of a tiny fig leaf to cover up the tremendous harm Trumpcare would do, we need real action that lower costs and expands access. The Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, but we can’t go back to the days where pre-existing conditions prevented millions of Americans from having affordable insurance. Instead, we should work to make the ACA more effective at cutting costs.

There are too many healthcare exchanges offering only one insurance company’s plans and prescription drug prices have risen to an unacceptable level.

In the short term, we can address these issues. We need to give more certainty to insurers so they don’t remove plans from the market or increase prices. It’s time to attack high drug costs by targeting monopolistic practices and price gouging.

We should allow medicines to be imported from Canada and do more to pay providers for the quality of care, not base it on number of patients seen. And, we should allow Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies to cut the cost of providing critical services to senior citizens.

But I hope we can do even better than that. This is a very personal issue – my brother was born 10 weeks premature and has a pre-existing condition. His insurance bill coming out of the hospital at birth was 104 pages long. If Congressman Denham succeeds in turning Trumpcare into law, the next time my brother would be guaranteed access to affordable health insurance would be when he’s 65 and eligible for Medicare.

I believe every American has a right to affordable healthcare, no matter where they come from or how much money they make.

We need to double down on the part of our healthcare system that works best by expanding Medicare to any American who wants it. Ultimately that’s the only way we are going to be able to protect our citizen’s healthcare from politicians like Rep. Denham who want to take it away in exchange for tax cuts.

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 12:11 PM with the headline "Denham was wrong on healthcare bill; we can provide a better path."