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Pete Stark on Medicare
Pete Stark is working every day to protect and improve Medicare for America’s senior citizens and people with disabilities. During the last 12 years, Medicare has been under attack. Former Republican Newt Gingrich famously said that Medicare should “wither on the vine.”
Pete Stark wasted no time upon regaining the majority. In 2007, the House passed the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act. In addition to creating an improved SCHIP program that would have provided health care to 11 million children, the CHAMP Act made long overdue investments and improvements to Medicare such as: improving preventive coverage, providing mental health parity, updating and improving subsidy programs to ensure that Medicare is affordable for people with lower incomes, providing two years of positive updates to physician payments while Congress worked to create a new permanent payment formula, ending massive overpayments to private plans in Medicare, and eliminating provisions inserted by the Republicans meant to dismantle Medicare. While the House acted quickly to pass this legislation, it has been stalled in the closely divided Senate.
Pete believes that we must protect and maintain Medicare for future generations. We must strengthen the program by ensuring its financial viability, and we must modernize the program by expanding it to truly help seniors and people with disabilities afford prescription drugs.
In addition, Pete believes that Medicare is a program that should be built on to provide health coverage for all. To that end, he’s introduced MediKds which would provide coverage for all children under a new federal program modeled on Medicare. He’s also introduced AmeriCare, legislation that would provide universal health care through building on what works – Medicare and employer provided coverage.
Rep. Stark is excited about the 2009 elections and the real promise of tackling universal health care next year.
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