Making Healthcare Accessible for Everyone

Candace was in a car accident in high school, resulting in chronic back pain. As a result, after graduating college, Candace was forced to work a second and third job just to afford her health care premiums and deductibles. The cost of the physical therapy, prescription drugs, and ongoing care she needed to get healthy put her into debt. This story is remarkable in that it is increasingly unremarkable: Far too many Americans struggle to afford the care they need, and that’s wrong.

The Affordable Care Act made great progress, but health care access is still far too limited and health care costs continue to skyrocket in the U.S. The U.S. is the only developed nation that does not guarantee its citizens access to health care, and we pay more for our health care and our prescription drugs, per capita, by far. Candace believes that investing in health care for all Americans is not only the morally right thing to do, but it will also save taxpayers money long-term by making workers more productive, increasing preventive care so that we catch illnesses early, and negotiating prescription drug prices down. Candace believes that health care is a human right.

In Congress, Candace will:

• Protect and work to expand the Affordable Care Act, which prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and allows children to stay on their parents’ healthcare plans until they’re 26.
• Fight to lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies and buy cheap generic drugs from Canada.
• Implement a public health care option, which already has broad public support, so that we can expand health care access to the millions who do not have it while making health care more affordable for Americans who are struggling to pay their deductibles and co-pays.
• Protect people with pre-existing conditions and crackdown on surprise medical billing.
• Push Texas lawmakers to expand Medicaid, this is the biggest immediate action we can take to improve healthcare access and coverage for 1.5 million Texans.
• Hold prescription drug companies accountable for price gouging and the role they have played in the opioid crisis.