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Published: June 2009

Health reform legislation must lower costs for working families

Coalition: Healthcare

In a letter to Congress, Consumer Action and its coalition partners ask that any laws enacted on behalf of healthcare reform include strong provisions making insurance coverage affordable.

The undersigned organizations strongly urge you to ensure that comprehensive health reform legislation gives America’s working families the assurance that they will be able to afford health care coverage. To make health care coverage meaningful, people with low and moderate incomes will need comprehensive benefits and strict limits on out-of-pocket expenses.

The cost of health insurance coverage has skyrocketed in recent years, growing 5.4 times faster than wages between 2000 and 2007. Despite higher costs, the coverage people get is skimpier, leading to higher out-of-pocket costs and delayed or foregone care. Families without access to employer-based coverage are in even worse straits, and, in this economy, millions of families are living in fear of losing their jobs and the health coverage that comes with those jobs.

Congress must help low- and moderate-income people afford health coverage. Lower income families spend a higher proportion of their household earnings on necessities such as housing, transportation, utilities and food, leaving little money left for health care costs. Medicaid provides important affordability protections, but millions of Americans cannot get Medicaid because of the extremely low income limits and restrictions on who can qualify. If a person does not fall into a specific eligibility category, he or she can literally be penniless and still be ineligible for Medicaid. Furthermore, working families who don’t qualify for Medicaid need affordability protections, too.

To ensure that low- and moderate-income people have access to affordable health care they need and deserve, we propose the following:

1 - Expand and improve the Medicaid program. Creating an income eligibility floor will help more low-income people get the care and protections they need. For example, the Senate Finance Committee has suggested a limit of 150 percent of the federal poverty level for Medicaid and 275 percent of the federal poverty level for CHIP ($27,465 and $50,352, respectively, for a family of three in 2009).

2 - Provide premium subsidies to help moderate-income people purchase coverage through a health insurance exchange, and provide the greatest subsidies to those with the lowest incomes. Subsidies would help these people afford coverage and get access to the health care they need.

3 - Limit out-of-pocket expenses for low- and moderate-income people. In 2006-2007, the median deductible for plans purchased in the individual market was $1,747. These out-of-pocket costs are far too expensive for lower income people, and will only cause people to continue to delay or forgo care.

Lead Organization

Families USA

Other Organizations

ADAP Advocacy Association (aaa+) | American Academy of Family Physicians | American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network | American Heart Association/American Stroke Association | Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law | CANN - Community Access National Network | Center for Adolescent Health & the Law | Child Welfare League of America Children's Dental Health Project | Coalition on Human Needs | Community Access National Network (TIICANN) | Community Action Partnership | Community Catalyst | Easter Seals | Families USA | Friends Committee on National Legislation | HIV Medicine Association | Lutheran Services in America | National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors | National Alliance on Mental Illness | National Association of Community Health Centers | National Association of Social Workers | National Center for Law and Economic Justice | National Medical Association | National Multiple Sclerosis Society | National Partnership for Women & Families | National Spinal Cord Injury Association National WIC Association | National Women’s Law Center | Pediatric Stroke Network, Inc. | Society for Adolescent Medicine | Susan G. Komen for the Cure Advocacy Alliance The AIDS Institute | The National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA) | Union for Reform Judaism | United Spinal Association | Women of Reform Judaism | YWCA USA

More Information

Health Reform in 2009

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