Rep. Waxman, Passionate Advocate For Medicaid And Public Health Issues, Announces His Retirement
It didn’t expand Medicaid, nor did it establish its own marketplace, Keith pointed out. “But it is taking on a significant regulatory role in the marketplace by conducting plan management and [it] enacted legislation on all of the market reforms that we studied,” she said. Expanding access to affordable health care had been one of President Barack Obama’s major campaign promises during the 2008 election cycle. After months of debate, negotiation and political wrangling, he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010. In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law’s individual mandate requiring that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty.
Waxman, Passionate Advocate For Medicaid And Public Health Issues, Announces His Retirement KHN Staff Writer Jan 31, 2014 Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is one of the Medicaid program’s most vocal — and effective — champions, announced Thursday he plans to retire from the House at the end of this year, his 40th on Capitol Hill. The former Energy and Commerce Committee chairman has been one of his party’s central figures in the highest profile health care debates, most recently helping to craft the sweeping 2010 health care law, which Waxman said was one of his “lifelong dreams finally achieved.” In a statement, President Barack Obama said that Waxman “will leave behind a legacy as an extraordinary public servant and one of the most accomplished legislators of his or any era.” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference about preserving Medicaid funding during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill December 11, 2012 in Washington (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images). Waxman’s announcement comes just weeks after fellow California House member and health care advocate George Miller announced that he will not seek reelection. (They are the last House members who were in the Democratic wavethat swept into Congress in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.) In the Senate, three other Democrats with high-profiles on health care long-time Medicaid advocate Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin of Iowaare also leaving. The departures have caused concern among health care groups that Congress is losing some of its strongest advocates for the poor and underserved. “It’s a whole generation of leadership in health care that we will have to replace,” said John Rother, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, whose members include the AFL-CIO, CVS Caremark and Verizon.
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