Huffman Votes Against 51st Attempt to Undermine Health Reform, Calls for Renewed Effort to Address the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate

March 14, 2014

WASHINGTON­—Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) today voted against H.R. 4015, House Republicans’ 51st attempt to undermine or repeal the Affordable Care Act. The bill approved by the House today is a particularly cynical one, opposed by medical and seniors’ organizations because it undermines a bipartisan, bicameral effort to address the payment system for physicians who accept Medicare patients, who are facing a 24 percent pay cut starting April 1.

Huffman is a cosponsor of the original SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act, which would have permanently reformed the Sustainable Growth Rate and ensured that seniors do not lose their health care. However, the House GOP leadership added a provision to the bill that would tie this permanent Medicare “doc fix” to a delay of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a delay would cause insurance premiums to skyrocket.

“It’s unacceptable that the House GOP leadership is playing politics with the health care of the more than 50 million Americans with Medicare. How shameful that they would put Medicare at risk – just so they can make another partisan statement against the Affordable Care Act,” Congressman Huffman said. “Once again, the hyperpartisan House majority has taken what could be a bipartisan, bicameral issue and poisoned the well by linking it to their ideological crusade to derail health care reform. We need to fix the Sustainable Growth Rate, and it’s going to take a healthy consensus to finally do it.”

The altered Republican bill that Huffman voted against today is opposed by the American Medical Association, the AARP, Alliance for Retired Americans, American Academy of Family Physicians, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and many other seniors’ advocacy groups, health insurers, and physician and medical student associations.

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