Every Nebraskan deserves affordable, quality care wherever they live, but today health care costs are out of control. Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans are making it worse by slashing Medicaid and refusing to extend much needed tax credits to help keep health care costs down. These actions will devastate Nebraska families and force many of our rural hospitals to close. My wife, Janelle, is a primary care doctor, so I hear what these policies mean for her patients every day at home. Patients are already forgoing needed care and the higher costs from Trump’s health care cuts will only make it worse.

Right now, millions of American families can only afford health insurance because of Affordable Care Act tax credits that lower their monthly premiums. I know because I helped write the ACA, including those tax credits to lower health care costs for tens of millions of Americans. Over the course of my career as an economic policy expert, I’ve been laser focused on how to bring down costs for Nebraska families. I fought to enhance and expand the ACA tax credits so that millions more Americans could afford insurance, including 34,000 people right here in Nebraska’s second congressional district. But because of President Trump’s budget law, those tax credits are set to expire this year. And if Congress doesn’t stand up to him, health care premiums will skyrocket overnight.

The economics are simple: we need to spread risk as widely as possible, and that means bringing more people under the umbrella of insurance – be it employer based, ACA marketplace, Medicaid, or Medicare – and stop the reckless effort by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress to push us back toward a system of uncompensated care that will end up costing us all more in the end.

In Congress, I’ll fight to:

• Reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts so that working families just trying to get by have access to the care they need

• Extend the expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits I helped write to keep costs down for Nebraska families

• Fight to protect rural hospitals and urban community health centers so that health care is not only affordable, but accessible, for every Nebraskan

• Keep Medicare on solid financial footing for our generation and the next

• Fight for a woman’s right to choose here in Nebraska and across the country