Congressman Sander Levin

Health Care

I have heard from families who like their current insurance and want to keep it. I have heard from people who have lost their jobs and have had trouble getting coverage because of pre-existing conditions. I have heard from doctors and nurses frustrated with the amount of time they spend on paper work rather than patient care. And I have heard from families who are buckling under the costs of their health care, whether or not they have insurance.

Health Care Reform

I am committed to health care reform that keeps the best of our current system and fixes what is broken.

The status quo is unsustainable. Health care costs are going up so much faster than wages that more and more families are being squeezed. People who have insurance worry about losing coverage if they lose or change their jobs. Too many are blocked from attaining quality care because of high costs and limits on coverage of pre-existing conditions. We need reform to provide stability to the current system and take steps to lower costs for all of us.

As we consider reform proposals, we all need to ask how they would impact us and our families. Under the proposal currently being considered in the U.S. House, the starting point is if you get insurance through your employer today, you will continue to do so.  If you are self-employed or uninsured, you will have the option to purchase insurance through a new Health Insurance Exchange. The Exchange would be a one-stop-shopping location where there would be a range of private plans or a new public plan. If your income is below a certain level, you will get a voucher that you can apply to any of the private plans or the new public plan. If you are on Medicare, that will stay exactly the same, with some improvements in benefits.

I hope you will use this website to learn more about the proposal and continue to express your view.

• More information on health care reform
• Read the text of the legislation
• Share your story
• Visit our Health Care Hub

Children’s Health Care

One of the first actions of the 111th Congress was to pass legislation to continue and expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). CHIP currently provides health insurance for 7 million low-income children. This legislation extended the program for another 5 years and funded it to cover another 4 million uninsured children.

• More on children’s health insurance

Health Research

Health care research is essential to improving clinical treatments and finding new cures. I believe that we must provide adequate funding for medical and health research if we are to continue improving health outcomes and enhancing the quality of life in America. To this end, I strongly support increasing federal funds for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the country’s top-notch federal agency for supporting and conducting research on disease prevention, causes, treatment, and cures.

After years of underfunding by the Bush Administration, Congress acted definitively to increase funding for the NIH in 2008 and 2009. The Recovery Act included an additional $10 billion in funding for the NIH. These funds will enable thousands of new research projects that will create and maintain jobs around the country.

• More on health research
• Read the letter I signed encouraging increased funding for NIH

Lowering the Costs of Prescription Drugs

The past fifty years have seen a revolution in prescription medications. Not only do we now have access to a growing number of traditional chemical drugs, we are also seeing a rise in “biologics”, drugs made from living organisms or biologic processes. These drugs are fighting such diseases as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.

Prescription drugs and biologics can save lives and improve patients’ quality of life. But to do so they must be affordable to the people who need them.

• More on lowering the costs of prescription drugs

Mental Health

According to the Surgeon General, only one-third of Americans with diagnosable mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and clinical depression are receiving appropriate treatment. This statistic tells me that we have a lot of work to do in the area of mental health care. Many adults and children are unable to seek treatment because their private or public insurance does not cover mental health services or imposes additional costs or limits on care. Still others are among the 45 million people with no health insurance at all. I believe that all Americans should have access to mental healthcare when they need it, and I have made removing barriers to mental health treatment a top priority.

• More on increasing access to mental health care

Women’s Health

In 2005, I introduced the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act, and the bill was signed into law in 2007. The bill is referred to as Johanna’s Law in honor of Johanna Silver Gordon, a Southfield high school teacher who died of ovarian cancer in 2000. The legislation created a federal education campaign to increase awareness and early detection of gynecological cancers. To view the website for the education campaign, housed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, please click here.

I have also been working to protect breastfeeding women by giving them the right to breastfeed at work, to eliminate discrimination against women in health insurance plans and require coverage of maternity care, and to ensure that women have the option to give birth in birth centers as well as in hospitals.

• More on my efforts to promote women’s health

(Updated November 6, 2009)