Congressman Roe Offers Amendment to Ensure Access to Affordable Health Coverage Options

Rep. Phil Roe

WASHINGTON D.C. – Rep. Phil Roe, M.D. (R-Tenn.) released the following statement after offering an amendment during an Education and Labor Committee markup on H.R. 1010, which seeks to overturn the Trump administration’s “Short-Term Limited Duration Insurance” (STLDI) rule:

“Instead of working on a bipartisan basis to improve health care, today we considered legislation that will take essential health benefit options away from patients and make it more likely – not less likely – that patients choose to go without health insurance. I offered a simple amendment that would have gone in the opposite direction by codifying the current definition of STLDI plans and allowed for guaranteed renewability. This insures patients get to pick what essential health benefits they need, not the government.

“While my Democrat colleagues were pontificating and calling STLDI plans ‘junk,’ they refused to acknowledge that President Obama’s eleventh-hour change to the definition limiting these plans to a three-month duration instead of 12 months upended over 20 years of regulations in place since the Clinton administration – and in effect for the entire Obama administration. We need to be working together to increase affordable coverage options rather than eliminating them through one-size-fits-all government mandates.”

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