Honey / 2 Senator Tran

S.S._____

A BILL
To make all states that fail to participate in Medicare expansion forego federal funding of all types.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Health Reform Act of 2015.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) Nearly four million poor uninsured adults fall into the coverage gap nationally.
2) Texas has the highest number of citizens in the coverage gap, nearly one million, due to a combination of not
expanding Medicaid and having the strictest Medicaid enrollment guidelines in the country.
3) Direct-care workers are 32 percent less likely than other workers to have employer-sponsored coverage, making
Medicaid an important option.
4) Nearly 300,000 of Americas paid caregivers such as nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care aides
who provide care and assistance to millions of our nations elders and people with disabilities, have been denied
coverage because they live in one of the 21 states that have rejected federal funds from the Affordable Care Act for
Medicaid expansion.
5) The Medicaid expansion is designed to cover nonelderly low-income adults with household incomes at or below
138 percent of the federal poverty level.
6) Because Texas has opted not to expand Medicaid, its estimated uninsured population continues to exceed four
million.
7) Lower-income Americans who find themselves near the 100 percent threshold are working more to try to earn
enough to qualify for the health insurance premium tax credit.
8) Nationally, 43 percent of uninsured adults in the coverage gap are White non-Hispanics, 24 percent are Hispanic,
and 27 percent are Black.
9) Without insurance poor working people don't have many options beyond relying on emergency rooms or the few
community health care centers that offer free or discounted health services.
10) In states that chose not to expand Medicaid, it left about eight million who live in poverty (19,530 for a family of
three) without any assistance for health insurance
11) As of March 2015, residents in non-expansion states are accounted for nearly 23 percent of Americans without
coverage.
12) Uninsured Americans are faced with the risk of bankruptcy when faced with major medical expenses.
13) Expanding Medicaid open benefits up to more of the uninsured population, providing them with timelier
healthcare, reducing non-paying hospital visits as well as unclogging some of the emergency rooms to make way for
actual emergencies.
14) The growth of jobs and the health sector from expanding Medicare will benefit state economies.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) Any and all states opting out of the Affordable Care Act will lose 50 percent of government federal funding for all
aspects. This act will fix the coverage gap by providing subsidies to citizens who make more than 44 percent of the
federal poverty line and making healthcare affordable to those who were in the States that opted out of the ACA.
B) There will be a grandfather clause allowing states that have already opted out to reevaluate their decision. The
United States Department of Health and Human Services will administer and enforce the foregoing of federal
funding.
C) This bill will go into effect on January 1, 2016. If the Senate has not passed this bill by January 1, 2020, the bill
will be terminated from discussion.