Health Care
As an Emergency Room doctor, I know how important it is for people in the 36th district to have access to quality, affordable health care. Some improvements have been made to our healthcare system, such as allowing parents to insure their children until the age of 26, making prescription drugs more affordable for seniors, and ensuring that people with preexisting conditions cannot be denied insurance coverage. However, our system remains imperfect and expensive, wasting billions every year and we must continue working to improve it.
We must address the waste, fraud and abuse in our health care system. In my position on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I have focused on improving the health care system for our nation’s veterans and developing bipartisan solutions to end the Veterans Affairs backlog of disability claims. There are real opportunities to save the American public billions of dollars, like using electronic medical records to coordinate care and make our healthcare system more efficient. Also, allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices on behalf of beneficiaries would save over a billion dollars and make prescriptions more affordable for our seniors.
I am first and foremost a physician, and the health of our community is my chief concern. I will continue to fight to protect the Medicare and Social Security benefits that seniors have worked hard to earn and find bipartisan solutions that will improve our nation’s healthcare system. Good ideas don’t belong to a single party, and I will continue to reach across the aisle to improve healthcare for the residents of California’s 36th Congressional district.
More on Health Care
Washington, D.C. – This week, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass a bill authored by Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D. (CA-36) to improve seniors’ access to Medicare coverage. The Beneficiary Enrollment Notification and Eligibility Simplification (BENES) Act of 2019 would expand beneficiary outreach and education to help clarify when and how to sign up for Medicare Part B and reduce gaps in coverage.
Washington, DC - Today, Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D. (CA-36) introduced legislation to ensure timely Medicare coverage of groundbreaking early cancer detection tests for our nation’s seniors. The bipartisan legislation recognizes emerging advances in our nation’s fight against cancer by creating a Medicare coverage pathway for new innovative tests that detect multiple types of cancer before symptoms develop. Dr. Ruiz introduced the Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act alongside Reps.
Washington, D.C. – Today, the House unanimously passed Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D.’s (CA-36) bill to expand access to lifesaving care for patients with opioid use disorder, specifically for those seeking long-term care after a trip to the emergency department. H.R.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that not passing another coronavirus stimulus package has left holes in state and local infrastructure to adequately fight the pandemic.
I am cautiously optimistic at the current pace of COVID-19 vaccine development and encouraged that a number of drug companies are seeing promising results. Current projections show that we may begin vaccinating the public by the end of this year or early 2021, but it will take hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to effectively curb this virus.
President Donald Trump may have made railing against undocumented immigrants central to his political brand, but during the pandemic even his administration has been forced to acknowledge the essential work they do, particularly in keeping the country fed during a crisis.
For farmworkers in California’s Coachella Valley, it’s brutally simple: no work means no food. But fear of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it amongst their families has created uncertainty and anxiety.
In an effort to ease their fears, Dr. Raul Ruiz, a congressman representing California’s 36th District, partnered with Coachella Valley Volunteers in Medicine to bring pop-up testing sites to the fields.
While House Democrats have passed novel coronavirus pandemic legislation that finally provides assistance to immigrant workers left out of previous legislation (and currently stalled by Senate Republicans), one member is going even further to ensure this community doesn’t fall through the cracks. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, an emergency room physician, has tested farm workers and their families in Coachella Valley, NBC News reports.
In the nation’s patchwork response to the pandemic, Democratic congressman and physician Raul Ruiz is helping fill a gap by taking coronavirus testing directly to farmworkers in the Coachella Valley of California.
The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee will consider legislation this week that would provide testing and health services to veterans sickened by exposure to hazardous chemicals in combat or garrison.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced the bill last week. It also would expand research on toxic substances found on military installations and used in combat, and broaden training among Department of Veterans Affairs medical providers to screen for possible exposures.