Representative TJ Cox Votes to Pass Patient Protection & Affordable Care Enhancement Act

Today, Rep. TJ Cox (CA-21) joined House Democrats to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act, a bold piece of legislation that builds on the Affordable Care Act to lower health costs and prescription drug prices for all Americans. This vote comes days after the Trump Administration filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entirety of the ACA.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic and the related recession causes massive suffering across the country, Congress needs to act to lift working families up by strengthening and enhancing the Affordable Care Act – rather than ripping health coverage away from millions of Americans, which is what the Trump Administration wants to do,” said Rep. Cox. “In my district, there are 325,000 people enrolled in Medicare or MediCal and almost 27,000 bought their health insurance through the ACA. This bill is for them and all working families, to make their health care and prescription drugs more affordable.” 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act is an important step towards ensuring more Americans have access to healthcare. The bill will do this by: 

• Significantly increasing the ACA’s affordability subsidies to be more generous and cover more middle-class families.   
• Negotiating for lower prescription drug prices, delivering the power to negotiate lower drug prices so that Americans no longer have to pay more for our medicines than Big Pharma charges for the same drugs overseas.  
• Combating inequity in health coverage faced by communities of color, expanding more affordable coverage to vulnerable populations and fighting the maternal mortality epidemic by requiring states to extend Medicaid or CHIP coverage to new mothers for a full year post-partum,  
• Cracking down on junk plans & strengthens protections for people with pre-existing conditions, reversing the Trump Administration’s expansion of junk health insurance plans that do not provide coverage for essential medical treatments and drugs and that discriminate against people with pre-existing medical conditions, and 
• Expanding coverage for the 4.8 million Americans cruelly excluded from coverage. 

This bill also strengthens the critical outreach and enrollment funding that has been gutted by the Trump Administration. This will bolster an amendment to H.R. 987, the Strengthening Health Care and Lowering Prescription Drug Costs Act, added by Rep. Cox last year that would ensure that communities with high unemployment numbers were prioritized in outreach, education, and enrollment assistance to Americans shopping for health care coverage.  

WATCH REP. COX SPEAK ON THE BILL

A fact sheet on the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act is available here.