Health care for low-income families
What they say
His campaign says that in Congress he passed legislation to help low-income families receive health care.
“In Congress, Mike worked to eliminate federal taxes on education savings plans and passed legislation to help low-income families receive healthcare.”
What the record shows ·
In 2005 he sponsored the Medicaid Health Opportunity Account Act (H.R. 3757). It would have set up a Medicaid demonstration letting states offer alternative benefits, including health opportunity accounts, to groups of enrollees. His bill stayed in subcommittee, but section 6082 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-171) enacted the same demonstration in nearly the same words. He voted Yea on the act's conference report on December 19, 2005 (Roll Call 670) and on the rule that cleared it on February 1, 2006 (Roll Call 4). It became law on February 8, 2006.
Limit: His own bill did not pass; its program became law inside a larger act. The same act also gave states the option of new Medicaid premiums and cost sharing. Whether any state used the program was not checked. The test is a federal (CMS) approval of a state demonstration under section 1938 of the Social Security Act, which this act added.