Ted Lieu on Health Care

No vouchers for Medicare; healthcare is a right

Support ObamaCare, but work to make it better

A: No. As a legislator, I have voted regularly to support the ACA, including the creation of the health exchange, setting a minimum level of benefits and expanding MediCal. Additionally, with the increase in health insurance marketing to communities whose first language is not English, I authored and passed a law to ensure that when insurers advertise in a language other than English, the documents must also be in that language. However, the ACA is not perfect and I would support bills to make it better.

Expand Medi-Cal eligibility for ObamaCare

The Legislature finds:
• The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system.
• 46 million Americans did not have health insurance.
• The Affordable Care Act is the culmination of decades of movement toward health reform
• As a result of the Affordable Care Act, , by 2019, between 1.2 and 1.6 million individuals will be newly enrolled in Medi-Cal.
• It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, including the Medi-Cal expansion for individuals with incomes below 133% of the federal poverty level.
• This bill would implement the Affordable Care Act by modifying provisions relating to determining eligibility for Medi-Cal.

Status:Bill passed Assembly, 54 -24-1; passed Senate, 28-8-3; approved by Governor, June 27,ÿ2013. (Lieu voted YEA).

GOP can't beat ObamaCare, so they pretend it's a "disaster".

Heritage Action Summary: This vote would fully repeal ObamaCare.

Heritage Foundation recommendation to vote YES: (2/3/2015): ObamaCare creates $1.8 trillion in new health care spending and uses cuts to Medicare spending to help pay for some of it. Millions of Americans already have lost, and more likely will lose, their coverage because of ObamaCare. Many Americans have not been able to keep their doctors as insurers try to offset the added costs of ObamaCare by limiting the number of providers in their networks. In spite of the promise, the law increases the cost of health coverage.

Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recommendation to vote NO: (robertreich.org 11/22/2013): Having failed to defeat the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are now hell-bent on destroying the ObamaCare in Americans' minds, using the word "disaster" whenever mentioning the Act, and demand its repeal. Democrats [should] meet the Republican barrage with three larger truths:

1. The wreck of private insurance: Ours has been the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. For-profit insurers have spent billions finding and marketing their policies to healthy people--while rejecting people with preexisting conditions, or at high risk.
2. We could not continue with this travesty of a healthcare system: ObamaCare is a modest solution. It still relies on private insurers--merely setting minimum standards and "exchanges" where customers can compare policies.
3. The moral imperative: Even a clunky compromise like the ACA between a national system of health insurance and a for-profit insurance market depends, fundamentally, on a social compact in which those who are healthier and richer are willing to help those who are sicker and poorer. Such a social compact defines a society.

Legislative outcome: Passed House 239-186-8; never came to a vote in the Senate.