Response from Rep. Joe Courtney on Flailing Health Care Law

Dear Ms. Rondeau,

Thank you for contacting me about the Affordable Care Act. I appreciate your comments and having the benefit of your views.

The Affordable Care Act was passed into law in March 2010 after months of intense public debate in Congress and across the country.    It is by no means a perfect law.  H owever,  it is  a long overdue first step towards improving our health care system , and I am opposed to repealing or defunding the law. Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, there have significant benefits for individuals, families, businesses, state and local governments, and health care providers.  
 

In 2011,  for example,  over 37,000 Connecticut seniors in the Medicare Part D donut hole—a gap in coverage where beneficiaries must pay fully out-of-pocket for prescription medication—received a 50 percent discount on their brand name prescriptions with aggregate savings of over $5 million. In 2012, nearly 11,200 Medicare beneficiaries in eastern Connecticut saved over $10.8 million on prescription drugs.   This assistance will continue to grow until the donut hole is completely phased out in 2020.

Additionally, over 420,000 seniors in Connecticut have taken advantage of free preventative care services such as cancer screenings, cholesterol tests, and flu vaccinations as well as a new annual wellness screening. I have spoken with physicians that have shared stories about detecting early forms of cancer because they have additional time to speak with their patients about medical history. As a result, patients have better treatment outcomes with lower care costs.   These and other changes to Medicare, like new resources in fraud  prevention and  abatement, are slowing spending growth and extending the life of the program .   According to the 2013 Medicare Trustees report, Medicare will remain completely solvent through 2026, nearly a decade longer than projected at the time prior to passage o f the Affordable Care Act, thanks, in part, to the law.   

Another change from the law is a requirement that insurance companies spend at least 80 percent of the money they collect in premiums on health care costs for individual and small-group plans, and 85 percent for large-group plans. Insurers that do not meet the mark will have to give customers rebates. Nationally, in 2011 and 2012, $1.59 billion was returned to consumers thanks to this change.    Over $12.9 million has been returned to consumers in Connecticut , including nearly $170,000 to the town of Vernon, which helped fill a budget shortfall that would have otherwise fallen on local taxpayers.   

Small businesses have also benefitted from tax credits to provide coverage to their employees and larger corporations and municipalities have taken advantage of a new program, the Early Retiree Reinsurance program, which provides backstop coverage for high retiree care costs. Nationally, more than 228,000 small businesses have benefited from small business tax credits and in eastern Connecticut approximately 470 businesses have claimed the credit.   While small businesses have already claimed billions in tax credits, additional tax credits will be available to low and moderate income individuals and families without insurance beginning in 2014. Over the next ten years, an estimated 19 million Americans will receive these tax credits.

When Medicare was signed into law  48 years ago,  it  was an imperfect law   but provided a framework to ensure seniors had access to care at a time when over half did not have any health coverage and nearly a third lived below the poverty line.    Over the past five decades, Medicare has been amended dozens of time so as to improve the program which today, 50 million seniors and disabled Americans rely on for care and to live a decent life. Like Medicare, the Affordable Care Act will serve as a framework to improve our system of health care and coverage and instead of focusing on re pealing or defunding it,  Congress should focus on improving it, like it has done with Medicare or other major laws in the past. 

Again, thank you for sharing your views on this issue with me. Should you have any additional comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me in the future. For more information on my work in Congress, please visit my website at  courtney.house.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter   at   courtney.house.gov/forms/emailsignup .  You can also connect with me at  facebook.com/joecourtney or receive updates from  twitter.com/repjoecourtney .