This past Christmas, lawmakers and the President gave the American people the best gift possible: tax reform. The package will simplify and cut taxes, allowing American workers and their families to keep more of their hard-earned dollars. It will also spur more jobs and higher wages for American businesses, strengthening our economy and broadening opportunities for workers.

While this is a monumental victory and a positive way to end 2017, the work is not done. Now that tax reform is complete, Congress and the President should build on the momentum of their success and return to another central campaign promise: delivering health reform so that Americans have affordable coverage options and the care they need and want.

Every year since its passage, the Affordable Care Act has continued to damage America’s health insurance markets, significantly limiting the choices of consumers and costing American families greatly. In 2017, customers faced even lousier options when shopping for insurance on the ACA exchanges. According to a report from the Department of Health & Human Services, premiums increased 37 percent on average for the benchmark plan available in the law’s exchanges (in 2016, this plan increased 24 percent). The report also found that 29 percent of all consumers in the law’s exchanges have only one insurance carrier available to them and 55 percent of all consumers have two or fewer insurers from which to choose.

Too many Americans are in need of real relief which is why we cannot ignore the failures of the Affordable Care Act. Or as Hadley Heath Manning, Director of Policy, put it in a recent article published by The Hill, “We think it’s too important of an issue to leave unaddressed.”

That’s why our sister organization, IWV, along with IWF and more than 40 other groups representing millions of Americans, sent a letter to President Trump encouraging him to make health reform the focus of the 2019 budget reconciliation instructions and to help Congress design a bill that can muster the votes needed for passage of true health reform to give Americans more choices of more a?ordable health coverage and care that meet their needs.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE LETTER

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN THE HILL

To learn more, please click on the links above. Then, be sure to share this important letter with your family and friends.