With Open Enrollment Around the Corner, Shaheen Hosts Health Care Roundtable on Importance of Extending ACA Enhanced Premium Tax Credits

(Somersworth, NH) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), author of bicameral legislation that would permanently extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits, continued her “Affordability Action Tour” with a roundtable discussion at Greater Seacoast Community Health’s Goodwin Community Health location with business leaders, non-profits and Granite Staters that use the ACA for their health insurance coverage and are at risk of significantly higher premiums if the enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of this year. Photos from today’s roundtable can be found here.

Key quotes from Senator Shaheen:

• “This is a critical time for health care in the country as we go into another open enrollment period tomorrow. And as I'm sure you're following, we've been in a fight in Washington over extending the [ACA enhanced premium] tax credits to help people be able to afford health insurance through the Marketplace [...] Those tax credits are what have enabled so many [Granite Staters] to afford health insurance.”

• "I've done a number of these kinds of discussions around the state, and one of the things that has struck me everywhere is how much people have talked about the difference that we're seeing now in New Hampshire because of the Affordable Care Act Marketplace; because of those tax credits. We have a record number of enrollees—65,000 last year. For the last four years, that number has gone up and the number of uninsured has gone down.”

• “And what we know is the people who are going to be hit the hardest [by expiring ACA tax credits] are older residents, small business owners and people who live in rural areas. So that hits most of New Hampshire [...] It's going to have a real impact [...] not just on people who are affected, but on the whole health care system.”

• “I remember in the lead up to the Affordable Care Act, hearing from health care providers in New Hampshire about the health care deficit we had in the country because people couldn't afford care, and so they didn't get routine checkups. They waited until they were really ill, and then they went in. And over the years, because of being able to get health insurance, people have addressed that backlog of a lot of their health issues. And now we're looking at that happening again if we're raising premiums. That has a real impact.”

Shaheen is leading efforts in Congress to make health care more affordable through the preservation and extension of the enhanced premium tax credits. Shaheen’s first bill introduction this Congress was her landmark Health Care Affordability Act—bicameral legislation to permanently extend the tax credits for Marketplace coverage that lower health care costs for millions of Americans.

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