“Available, affordable, and accessible health insurance is attainable. It is unacceptable that there are 46 million people without health insurance in the wealthiest nation on earth.” -Rush Holt
New Jerseyans are finding it more and more difficult to find affordable health insurance for themselves and for their families. Rep. Holt believes that health care should be a right, not a condition, of employment. He believes that it is unacceptable that there are 46 million people without health insurance in the wealthiest nation on earth, but that available, affordable, and accessible health insurance is attainable. While he continues to support universal health care, he has worked in Congress to support Americans struggling to secure affordable health care that meets their needs.
*In the 110th Congress, Rush was a strong supporter of expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which provides 125,000 low income children in New Jersey and 6.6 million children across the nation with health insurance. However, President Bush vetoed legislation that Rep. Holt supported to reauthorize and expand SCHIP by investing an additional $35 billion over the next five years to ensure coverage for all children currently enrolled, and would have added four million currently uninsured children to the program. Rep. Holt will continue to work in Congress to stand by our moral obligation to keep children healthy and in the process make our society stronger by reauthorizing and expanding SCHIP.
*Rush Holt strongly supports a Medicare prescription drug benefit that is meaningful, affordable, reliable, and voluntary. He strongly supports the creation of a Medicare prescription drug benefit that genuinely helps seniors, while also protecting research and development that helps create life-saving medications. He voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 to allow the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate on behalf of all Medicare beneficiaries to help lower drug prices. The bill was blocked in the Senate, however. He will continue to work in Congress to ensure that seniors receive a comprehensive, voluntary, universal prescription drug benefit under Medicare, but not at the expense of the health of the Medicare system.
Rush Holt also wrote the Helping Fill the Medicare Rx Gap Act, H.R. 2058, which would help seniors by including additional drug expenditures towards the “true out-of-pocket” costs that determine when a beneficiary is eligible for catastrophic coverage.
*Rep. Holt has worked to improve Medicare benefits to best meet the needs of our nation’s seniors. He voted for the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, which – over President Bush’s veto - prevented the scheduled 10.6 percent cut to the Medicare physician reimbursement rate in 2008 and 2009.
*Rush Holt has fought in Congress for a strong mental health parity law. He was a cosponsor and voted for the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which will help the millions of Americans with private health insurance who suffer from mental illness finally receive the full access to the treatment they need and deserve without higher co-pays or treatment limits. On November 29, 2007, Rep. Rush Holt hosted a roundtable on mental health with local and national mental health advocates at Carrier Clinic in Belle Meade
*Rush has led the fight to increase funding for life-saving, medical research. He was a cosponsor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810), which Congress approved only to be vetoed by the President. Rush Holt also has worked consistently to increase funding for critical research at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Science Foundation. These investments in scientific and health research will improve options for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of life-threatening diseases such breast cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and diabetes.
*Rep. Holt believes that part of fulfilling our commitment to protecting the health of senior citizens includes ensuring that long term care options are more accessible, affordable, and safe. Rep. Holt supports efforts that would result in a higher quality of care for seniors who reside in community-based long-term care facilities. Rush Holt is a cosponsor of the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act (H.R. 2122), which would limit the number of overtime hours that nurses can be forced to work.
Additionally, Rep. Holt led a bipartisan group that successfully won $10 million to fund the Community Innovations for Aging in Place program in the pending Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2009. Previously, Rep. Holt helped create the Community Innovations for Aging in Place program to award grants and technical assistance to target supportive services to assist the millions of older adults living in naturally occurring retirement communities throughout the country.
Health care is an enormous and complicated issue, and one of vital importance to everyone. Rush Holt has the dedication, the convictions, and the professional knowledge and experience to tackle this complex issue and fight for fair and effective solutions for Central New Jersey and the nation.