Peter Lee’s Testimony to Congress Re: Covered California & ACA
Peter V. Lee, Executive Director,
Covered California – 9/23/20
This section has been edited for brevity but is otherwise verbatim.
Looking Ahead to Building on the Affordable Care Act
While the Affordable Care Act has provided a strong framework that has helped millions of Americans gain access to quality health coverage and care, there is more work to be done both in California and across the nation.
- State Efforts Are Not a Substitute for National Solutions –Policies such as reinsurance, individual mandate penalties and enhanced subsidies are best instituted on a national basis …. In some cases, such as reinsurance, a federal plan is the only plan some states will be able to achieve because of the significant cost involved.
- Increased Subsidies for Low- and Middle-Income Consumers – California addressed the infamous “subsidy cliff” for middle-income consumers by creating a new state subsidy program and extending those benefits to eligible people who earn up to 600 percent of the federal poverty level. The program has helped hundreds of thousands, including more than 30,000 middle-income Californians pay for their health insurance coverage. However, … the policy is not perfect as consumers could still spend nearly 20 percent of their income on health insurance. …Increasing financial help and removing the cliff entirely will increase the number of Americans who have health insurance and move our nation closer to universal coverage.
- Give Americans with Inadequate Employer Coverage a Path to Meaningful Coverage – … many Americans, most of them low-income earners, have employer sponsored coverage that is inadequate. While the Affordable Care Act ties co-pays and deductibles to your income – you earn less, you pay less for a doctor’s visit – the same is not true for most people with job-based coverage. Consumers whose employer-sponsored insurance does not meet certain standards or value should be allowed to look to the marketplaces for more affordable and better coverage or the nation needs to address other routes so those with thin employer-sponsored coverage do not have coverage in name only.
- Lower Underlying Health Care Costs – … Covered California is working to improve health system performance by holding carriers accountable for assuring quality care and promoting delivery system reform. More effort must be made address the underlying costs of health care in our country, whether it is through making publicly negotiated pricing available to all consumers or through reforms to high prescription drug costs, the current situation is not sustainable over the long term.
- Addressing Equity and Disparities – The pandemic highlighted the fact that a global health crisis impacts communities differently. As noted earlier, we know that African American and Latino communities are bearing a higher cost in the battle against COVID-19 as they have suffered higher infection and death rates. Addressing this inequity, as well as dealing with the long-standing disparities facing communities of color will take a concerted and unified effort.
The entire testimony can be found at the link below:
