Letter: Getting it done on health care

To the Editor:

I believe most people are so busy and exhausted with the demands of daily life that there is little time to reflect about how to change the conditions of our lives. That’s what we elect representatives for. And I think we have a wonderful one in Lauren Underwood.

On health care alone, she has developed and helped to pass these pieces of legislation:

• Her Health Care Affordability Act, passed as part of the inflation Reduction Act, limits the cost of premiums for people who purchase their insurance to 8.5% or less of their income. This makes health care more affordable for 13 million people

• Her Lower Insulin Costs Now Act reduces costs of insulin by helping to make lower-cost, generic insulin available sooner. More than 1 million people in Illinois live with type I or type II diabetes, ie. one in four seniors and more and more children.

• She developed/sponsored the U.S. Medical Supply Chain Act that analyzed our dependence on critical drugs/medical devices, which are sourced or produced out of this country.

• Under her initiative, the Caring for Our Women Veterans Act was passed, which helps to ensure that female veterans get quality health care from VA facilities by requiring the department annually report to Congress on gender-specific care available at VA facilities.

• She developed the Veterans’ Care Quality Transparency Act, which helps guarantee that VA health care providers and other community care providers to veterans offer high quality mental health and suicide prevention.

This is a record of action we can build on and I urge all of you to make your vote count in November by reelecting Lauren Underwood. She will listen to your concerns and will continue to work to make people’s medical lives and all parts of our lives better.

Chuck Lederman

Oswego