|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
For Immediate Release: September 17, 2009
Contact: Adrienne Ammerman or Mary Robbins, 202-588-5180
BAUCUS PLAN A NECESSARY STEP ON ROAD TO COMPREHENSIVE REFORM
(Washington, DC) Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Senator Max Baucus (D- Mont.) yesterday released health care legislation with the goal of reforming our nation’s broken health care system and providing access to insurance to millions of Americans.
The following is a statement by Marcia D. Greenberger, Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC):
“The bill unveiled by Chairman Baucus brings the nation one step closer to reaching comprehensive health reform this year. With this bill, the last Committee is poised to complete its work, and the Senate is further along on its path toward passing a health care reform measure.
“While the Baucus proposal needs to be significantly strengthened in key respects, it does contain some important promises. It includes a new structure through which every person could ultimately get coverage, it ends insurance discrimination that women face in the individual market by eliminating key gender rating and pre-existing condition exclusions, and it ensures health plans cover certain basic health care needs, including maternity coverage.
“Most glaring is its lack of adequate supports to ensure coverage that would be truly affordable and available for those who need it most. There are also other necessary improvements, such as stronger measures to expand insurance reforms to the entire group market without limitations. We look forward to working with the Senate to ensure that more funds are devoted to increasing subsidies and cost-sharing protections for lower income people, and to making the other changes needed. And we know that we must remain vigilant to defeat efforts to weaken the bill further, including by taking away reproductive health care coverage that women already have.”
To learn more about NWLC’s work around women and health care reform, visit www.nwlc.org/reformmatters. To interview Marcia D. Greenberger contact Adrienne Ammerman at aammerman@nwlc.org or at 202-588-5180.
###
