Press Release

Congressman Ami Bera, M.D. offered the following comment on H.R. 4118:

"As a doctor, one of my top priorities in Congress is to lower the skyrocketing cost of health care and make it work better for patients. I voted today to delay a part of the health care law that requires individuals to enroll in a health insurance plan because, while getting the uninsured coverage remains critical, there have been a whole host of problems with implementation starting with the roll-out of the website, and continuing from there, and I couldn’t in good conscience vote to penalize people who haven’t yet enrolled.

While I believe this delay is the right thing to do now, and ACA is far from perfect, we cannot go back to the broken healthcare system that allowed insurance companies to reject people due to pre-existing conditions and when they get sick, to charge women higher premiums than men for the same coverage, and to jack rates whenever they want, without cause.

I will continue to work on ways to improve health care and make it work better for Sacramento County families, on fixes like the Small Business and Family Relief Act, which would delay a new tax on working families, small businesses, and seniors."