Healthcare

Congresswoman Stefanik is a tireless advocate for delivering high quality rural healthcare for North Country families and seniors by fighting to lower costs, improve quality, and strengthen accessibility. In order to tackle these challenges, Congresswoman Stefanik has supported bipartisan legislation to protect those with pre-existing conditions, allow families and businesses to shop for health insurance across state lines, reform torts, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and strengthen protections against fraud and abuse that cost the healthcare system billions each year. Most notably, Congresswoman Stefanik personally wrote the largest fix to Obamacare – the repeal of the auto-enrollment mandate – that was signed into law by President Obama.

Congresswoman Stefanik has been recognized for her exceptional work supporting hospitals and community health centers throughout the 21st Congressional District, particularly in securing funding throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. She was awarded the Distinguished Community Health Center Champion Award for her national leadership fighting for long-term funding for community health centers, and was recently awarded the 2021 Lyme Champion Award for her work to increase federal funding for Lyme Disease research, diagnostics, and treatment.

Congresswoman Stefanik has delivered many bipartisan solutions to address the needs of rural healthcare centers and hospitals across the country, including the Access to Rural Care Act, protections for the 340B prescription drug program, the Community Health Investment, Modernization, and Excellence Act, the School-Based Health Center Reauthorization Act, and most recently, the Protecting Rural Access to Care Act to support Critical Access Hospitals across the region. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Congresswoman Stefanik successfully delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal resources for North Country rural hospitals and healthcare centers so they could continue providing quality care to North Country families. Congresswoman Stefanik has also been a champion for expanding telehealth access to ensure rural families and seniors in the North Country have access to the care they need, recently securing more than $50,000 dollars in funding for the Northern New York Rural Behavioral Health Institute.

Congresswoman Stefanik is committed to finding innovative solutions to lower the costs of prescription drugs by increasing transparency and consumer purchasing power. She supported the passage of the Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act and the Know Lowest Price Act, and was an original cosponsor of the Lower Costs, More Cures Act, a bipartisan policy solution comprised of more than 40 provisions to lower-out-of-pocket spending, ensure new medicines and cures are not heavily taxed, strengthen transparency and accountability, and champion competition in the medical community.

Congresswoman Stefanik is a member of the Bipartisan Opioid Task Force and continues to be fiercely passionate about ending the drug epidemic in the North Country. She has led and supported many pieces of legislation to tackle the four pillars of addiction – prevention, addiction, treatment, and recovery. Congresswoman Stefanik helped pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act which reformed the federal mental health system and is helping Americans across the country. She also led the Opioid Workforce Act to provide Medicare support for additional graduate medical school residency positions, and this framework was included in a COVID relief package to address the shortage of physicians in rural communities. She has also supported the Opioid Abuse Reduction Act, the John S. McCain Opioid Addiction Prevention Act, The Fentanyl Sanctions Act, The Community Re-Entry through Addiction Treatment to Enhance Opportunities Act, the Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction Act, The Suspicious Order Identification Act, the Block, Report, and Suspend Suspicious Shipments Act, and many other pieces of meaningful legislation.

Congresswoman Stefanik recognizes that every family she represents has unique healthcare needs, and she often communicates directly with constituents who are struggling with different health issues. Working with local advocacy groups, Congresswoman Stefanik has found innovative solutions to tackle these unique healthcare needs by advocating for more research and funding at the federal level. She helped passed the 21st Century Cures Act to accelerate the discovery, development, and treatments for diseases from Alzheimer’s to Lyme. Congresswoman Stefanik also co-led the Younger Onset Alzheimer’s Act to include services for younger individuals diagnosed with onset Alzheimer’s in the Older Americans Act.

Congresswoman Stefanik is the Co-Chair of the Congressional Community Health Center Caucus, a member of the Rural Health Care Coalition, and a member of the Bipartisan Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic.