Rep. Wild and Attorney General Shapiro Host Affordable Care Act Roundtable

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representative Susan Wild (PA-07) and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro joined patient advocates, doctors, and hospital administrators to discuss their efforts to preserve, strengthen, and make health care more affordable for all Pennsylvanians.

“Promoting good patient outcomes while trying to reduce healthcare costs is one of the reasons I ran for Congress,” Wild said. “The easy part is making what I consider to be uncontroversial pronouncements like: ‘healthcare is a basic, fundamental right – and it’s not reserved for a privileged few’. The hard part is finding real world solutions that meet those pronouncements. Listening to folks today, and letting their experiences lead the conversation, helps us better understand how we can continue to advocate on their behalf in Harrisburg and Washington. The ACA was a crucial start in reducing the number of Pennsylvanians without insurance, but there remains work to be done to fix some unanticipated flaws in the ACA, build momentum to further reduce uninsured rates, and to mitigate the consequences of changes – and intentional sabotage – to the law.”

“Millions of Pennsylvanians rely on the protections of the Affordable Care Act, and I’m committed to safeguarding their legal rights and access to care,” Shapiro said. “The Trump Administration cannot subvert the rule of law to undermine the ACA just because they don’t like the bill, which was passed by Congress and remains the law of our land. I’m proud to stand with Congresswoman Wild to speak with Pennsylvanians about their experiences and discuss our efforts on the state and federal level to protect access to affordable care in our Commonwealth.”

Wild recently introduced the Family Health Care Affordability Act, a key component of House Democrats’ comprehensive legislative reform package to strengthen the ACA, lower costs, and protect people with pre-existing conditions, the Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions & Making Health Care More Affordable Act of 2019. Wild’s bill is intended to fix the “Family Glitch” – a loophole that has prevented some workers from being able to extend their employer-provided health coverage to their families by disqualifying them for the subsidies they need to be able to afford coverage for their spouse and their children.

Wild also co-sponsored H.R. 1010, a bill intended to reverse the expansion of junk health care plans - cheap, bare-bones plans that don’t cover basic care, such as preventive care, maternity care and prescription drugs. These plans are allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions,  allow providers to charge consumers more based on age and gender, often lead to high out-of-pocket costs and drive up health care costs for everybody.

To combat efforts to dismantle the ACA and its protections, Wild voted for a resolution urging the Department of Justice to cease its efforts against the Affordable Care Act and reverse its position in Texas vs. United States, which would dismantle the ACA and lead to devastating consequences for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians with pre-existing conditions and result in millions of Americans losing their healthcare.

Shapiro has secured two nationwide injunctions protecting access to contraception coverage by defending The Affordable Care Act, which requires insurance companies to cover preventive health care services, including contraception, with no co-pay. The injunctions were legal victories in lawsuits filed by Shapiro challenging the Trump Administration’s religious and moral exemption rules, which would allow virtually any company to deny women coverage for no-cost contraception. Shapiro’s victory protected coverage for 2.5 million Pennsylvania women and their families.

Shapiro also filed a successful lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Labor’s Association Health Plan Rule, which sought to expand the criteria for forming health plans for the purpose of evading consumer protections and undermining the Affordable Care Act. A U.S. District Court Judge rejected the expansion and ruled that association health plans (AHPs) were an “end-run around the ACA” and designed to “avoid the most stringent requirements of the ACA."

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