Ahead of Affordable Care Act’s 12th Anniversary, Rep. Sharice Davids Joins Kansans to Call for Lower Health Care Costs
Today, ahead of the 12-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Representative Sharice Davids joined Kansas parents and seniors to celebrate the landmark law's benefit to Kansans and to call for continued action to lower costs on health care and prescription drugs. Davids was joined by three residents from the Kansas Third, who shared how the cost of prescription drugs and insulin have impacted their lives.
"Twelve years ago, the passage of the Affordable Care Act changed lives. Since then, we've fought off attacks that would have stripped coverage from people with pre-existing conditions and we've passed tax cuts that saved people thousands of dollars on premiums," said Davids. "But skyrocketing prescription drugs are still stretching people's budgets. We have to keep building on the ACA—no one should be making the choice between paying their electric bill or buying their child's medicine."
Overland Park resident Heather Meyer shared that before the ACA was passed, she had to ration insulin to treat her Type I diabetes, putting her health at serious risk. The ACA helped her afford coverage as someone with a pre-existing condition—but she still has difficulty covering the exorbitantly high cost of insulin.
""Many times, I could not scrape together the $500-800 each month for the insulin I needed to survive. I drove to several hospitals and clinics, in search of anyone that could give me insulin to hold me over. I was still injecting blindly. I had no idea the long-term damage it would do to my health," said Heather Meyer, Overland Park resident and Kansas State Representative for the 29th District.
Lenexa resident Rachel Harper talked about how her family hits their deductible by June each year due to the cost of prescriptions for their 11-year-old son, who was born prematurely. Just one of those medications, which he takes twice daily, comes to $XX each year. She has tried different, cheaper medicines, but none of them provide the results that her son needs to live comfortably and stay healthy.
"To be at the pharmacy, having to offer words of encouragement to the employee there because he's so reluctant to tell you how much you owe, that's a really odd situation to find yourself in. And I think it reveals that we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to the costs of many prescriptions," said Rachel Harper, Lenexa resident. "As parents, we're prepared to do anything we can to keep our children safe and healthy. But I'm not sure that we should be asked to spend nearly three thousand dollars for a month's worth of medication in order to accomplish that."
Overland Park resident Sharon Hendrix shared how the ACA cut her health care costs in half as someone living with MS. She's now on Medicare, but still has to pay thousands out of pocket for medication and treatment each year.
"I was diagnosed with MS in 1988. Bare bones coverage was available but premiums were high, as were the deductible options. Once the ACA was available, the deductible was reduced to a manageable level and a premium of about half that," said Sharon Hendrix, Overland Park resident. "I thought the cost of my generic medication would be manageable, but it's still high at $1,500 per shot that must be take weekly…If these medications can be sold in other countries for much less than we are paying, there is no reason other than the drive for increased profit that Americans are paying so much more."
Davids is a fierce advocate for making health care affordable and accessible to all Kansans. She has voted to cap insulin costs at $35 per month, create the first ever out-of-pocket cap on seniors' prescription drug costs, and stop drug companies from raising prices faster than inflation. She has led her colleagues in pushing for Medicare to negotiate for lower prices on medications, a move that would lower costs for all Americans—not just those on Medicare. And she successfully passed a bipartisan law to protect patients from unexpected medical bills, which went into effect this year.