United States Senator Patty Murray

Ensuring that everyone can have access to quality, affordable health care is one of the most critical challenges facing our state and our nation.  While Washington has always been a leader in this area, we face a health care crisis in our country.  Costs are out of control, and too many working families and seniors still cannot get the care they need.

Working to help fix the national health care crisis is one of my top priorities.  And as a member of both the Senate Appropriations Committee and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I will push to expand access, and increase affordability, while maintaining quality, cultivating innovation, and ensuring that safety standards are met.

My Priorities

• Expanding access.
• Reining in costs while ensuring quality health care.
• Decreasing long-term costs through treatment and prevention.
• Ensuring access to mental health coverage and services.
• Supporting landmark research and technological advances to ensure access to the best health care possible.

My Accomplishments

• Helped pass health care reform legislation that will ensure Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and will significantly reduce long-term health care costs. This law will also ensure that insurance companies can never again refuse coverage for preexisting conditions, cut off care when they decide you are too expensive, or discontinue care when you get sick.
• Championed legislation to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program and increase the number of children covered to almost 10 million, up from the 6 million previously covered.
• Fought for increased funding for Community Health Centers and the National Health Service Corps, which work to improve health care access to medically underserved populations.
• Held roundtables around the state to raise awareness and work toward a solution to the shortage of health care workers.
• Fought to secure funding for Title VII and VIII Health Professions, which support the training of nurses and other primary care medical personnel and help encourage health professionals to practice in medically underserved areas.
• Supported federal telehealth programs, which use technology to help people in rural or underserved areas get better access to health care services.
• Supported an investment in health information technology, which has the potential to improve health care by streamlining health information, reducing error, and cutting costs. 
• Supported legislation that would reduce the costs of prescription drugs for Medicaid and Medicare recipients.
• Fought to increase National Institutes of Health funding to expand life-saving research.
• Helped pass the Mental Health Parity Act into law.
• Supported many bills to improve and expand treatment and prevention programs, which would save the health care system money and improve affordability.