Jeanne Shaheen knows that rising health care and prescription drug costs are among the most serious challenges facing Granite State families. That’s why she is helping to lead bipartisan efforts in Congress to expand and secure access to quality, affordable health care while lowering prescription drug costs.
In the Senate, she works across the aisle to make a difference for Granite Staters struggling to afford their health care. She led a bipartisan bill to suspend implementation of a Health Insurance Tax which was signed into law and will help reduce premiums for New Hampshire families. She has also worked to pass additional bipartisan measures signed into law to help lower costs for medical devices and health care costs for small businesses. Jeanne has sponsored a legislative package that would make health care much more affordable by reducing deductibles and copayments, increasing and expanding tax credits for more middle-class families, reducing out-of-pocket costs, and capping charges for uninsured patients.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Jeanne has fought for and helped secure tens of millions in federal funding to support New Hampshire’s hospitals, health care providers and health care workers on the front lines. She has ensured that federal relief packages include support for health care providers in every community.
When the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Jeanne helped lead the bipartisan opposition to defeat those efforts and save health care for more than 20 million Americans and nearly 100,000 Granite Staters who are covered through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion or the Health Insurance Marketplace, particularly to protect coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Jeanne is determined to protect health care coverage for the people of New Hampshire, despite the Trump administration’s continued efforts to sabotage the health care law and repeal the entire ACA. She has led all of her Democratic colleagues in legislation calling on the Administration to defend the ACA in court. She is also one of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of Trump’s short-term “junk” health care plans, which would allow health insurers to potentially discriminate against the 570,000 Granite Staters with pre-existing conditions, including those with cancer, asthma and diabetes, and take coverage from those seeking treatment of opioid addiction.
With prescription drug prices skyrocketing, Jeanne is leading on bipartisan, common-sense legislation to lower prescription drug costs for Granite Staters by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, encouraging cheaper generic prescription drugs to market, and taking action to lower insulin prices. She has worked to stop big drug companies from collecting tax breaks for their TV advertising.
Jeanne is fighting to stop the predatory surprise medical bills that are hitting Granite Staters for emergency room visits. When big Wall Street firms profiting from surprise medical bills ran misleading ads trying to stop her from working on a bipartisan solution to end them, Jeanne told them she would not be intimidated and would continue to work to address this unfair challenge facing Granite Staters. These measures would make an enormous difference for New Hampshire families, and Jeanne will continue to lead bipartisan efforts to stop these outrageous bills.
