Health Care
![Health professional examining a young patient. Health professional examining a young patient.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20121016221857im_/https://sires.house.gov/sites/sires.house.gov/files/styles/section_front_boilerplate/public/health.jpg)
Improving Access to Affordable Health Care
Every American deserves access to quality, affordable health care. Without access to affordable health care, our children cannot learn properly, parents cannot be as productive at work, and our seniors are forced to choose between food, shelter, or medical care. Unfortunately, far too often people are seeing an increase in the costs of care, while the quality of care declines. Furthermore, the cost of health care spending is putting our nation on an unsustainable fiscal path.
As a result, in March 2010, my colleagues and I in Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act to reform our nation’s struggling health care system. Prior to enactment, 46 million Americans were a serious illness away from destitution because they lacked health insurance. The Affordable Care Act works to protects people’s choices of doctors and health plans, as well as guarantees that all Americans have access to quality, stable, and affordable health care. Since enactment, millions of Americans are already benefitting from this law. In particular, insurers are no longer permitted to discriminate against children and others who are sick; small businesses are receiving billions of dollars in tax credits to provide health care coverage for their employees; and seniors are saving money on prescription drugs and receiving free preventive care through Medicare, including 72,000 seniors in the 13th District alone. On June 28, 2012 the Affordable Care Act was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. To learn more about the Affordable Care Act, including the timeline of implementation, please visit: www.healthcare.gov.
In addition to ensuring that every American has access to quality and affordable care, we must fund cutting-edge research into cures for diseases that take our loved ones away too soon, and disrupt everyday lives. I recently introduced H.R. 3760, the Collaborative Academic Research Efforts (CARE) for Tourette Syndrome Act, to expand and further coordinate efforts towards research at the National Institutes of Health for this often misunderstood and stigmatized disorder that impacts as many as one in one hundred Americans. While symptoms can be suppressed overtime, too many individuals, particularly children, face the everyday challenge of trying to manage tics whether at school or in various social settings. Through expanded and collaborative research, we can learn more about the cause and treatment of the disorder to help improve the lives of those individuals impacted by Tourette syndrome. To learn more about the CARE for Tourette Syndrome Act, please view my press release on H.R. 3760.