Health Care and the Insurance Marketplace: How Do You Navigate It?
The Affordable Care Act took effect January 1, 2014. Open enrollment began October 1 and ended March 31, 2014.
The League is dedicated to ensuring access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans. We believe that all Americans should have access to a basic level of care, including disease prevention, primary care (including prenatal and reproductive health), acute long-term care, mental health care and health promotion and education. Over the past 20 years, we have lobbied at the national, state and local levels for health care policy solutions, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to control costs and ensure a basic level of care for all.
For decades, local and state Leagues have lobbied for comprehensive health care reform at all levels of government. Throughout the health care debates of the past few decades, Leagues worked to provide millions of Americans across the country with objective information about the health care system and its significant reforms. This included organizing community education projects, holding public forums and debates, creating and distributing resource materials and engaging members of Congress and leading policy makers and analysts. Our work to advance and expand health care includes:
Protecting and Implementing the Affordable Care Act – The League supported the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare. We are committed to helping Americans understand the Affordable Care Act and its pivotal impact on their lives. Local and state Leagues work with government agencies, health care providers and advocates in order to educate community members about the health care system and ensure that states are implementing the Affordable Care Act to maximize its impact.
What does it mean for Texans?
What is the health care marketplace? What are the procedures for enrolling in them? What health care services does the plan cover - or deny?
Watch this spot for data and comments about the ACA.
Action: To achieve equal rights for all; to combat discrimination and poverty; and to provide equal access to housing, employment, quality education, and health care in Texas which would include, among other issues:
Child Health Care Ensure that state budget cuts do not undermine children's access to health care. Improve enrollment and retention for CHIP and Children's Medicaid and maintain effective delivery systems for both. Preserve Texas' public health safety net.
Health Care for the Elderly Support increased funding to provide adequate programs to serve the elderly.
Health Care for Those of Lesser Means Support providing basic health care services for those who are unable to pay. Basic services include emergency care, primary care, preventive care, care for catastrophic illness, nutrition, substance abuse treatment, and health education.
Services for Those with Behavioral Health Needs Maintain and increase funding for services to persons with serious mental illness, and include post-crisis and crisis prevention community care.
Women’s Reproductive Health – The League believes in the constitutional right to privacy, and trusts women to make their own reproductive health care decisions. We support the inclusion of reproductive health care, including birth control and abortion coverage, in any health benefits package. We believe that denying women access to health care services because of ill-defined religious or moral objections is discrimination based on sex. We actively oppose attempts to repeal the reproductive health services provided under the Affordable Care Act.
The Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and the Insurance Marketplace
Download this League of Women Voters publication to learn the facts.
Did you know that an overwhelming majority of Texans work in small businesses? Small businesses are a driving force behind our state's economy.
In fact, there are more than 2.2 million small businesses in Texas and they make up more than 98% of our state's employers. For most people, whether or not they have health coverage for themselves or their dependents, largely depends on their job. So, there's a strong connection between some of the choices small businesses make and the health care of children in Texas.