With the Speakerless House GOP desperately searching for an alternative, Freedom Caucus founder and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) has thrown his hat in the ring. Just like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan has a long history of fighting to raise health care costs and rip away critical protections from the American people. Jim Jordan is completely out of step with the American people on health care.
Since taking office in 2007, Jordan has been a key part of GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away protections for 135 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Fellow Republicans called him a “legislative terrorist” for helping orchestrate the 2013 government shutdown over defunding the Affordable Care Act. He’s supported cuts to Medicare and Social Security, threatening the health and well-being of our nation’s seniors, and supports a nationwide abortion ban. On top of his abysmal health care record in his first decade in Congress, Jordan spent the last two years fighting legislation to lower drug costs in order to keep Big Pharma’s profits high. Under Rep. Jordan’s leadership, Republicans will undoubtedly return to their radical agenda of attacking people with pre-existing conditions, repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing Medicare, and hiking drug and health insurance costs.
Jim Jordan’s record is clear: he has always supported higher prices for prescription drugs and higher premiums for people who buy health insurance on their own. Jordan opposed the Inflation Reduction Act and has a history of siding with the drug industry and health insurance companies. He’s tried to slash the Affordable Care Act & Medicaid, which seniors, communities of color, and people with disabilities count on. If Jordan got his way, drug companies would make even more record-breaking profits but working people would pay more for health care.
If Jim Jordan got his way:
- Medicare would be banned from negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs
- Insulin prices would not have been capped at $35/month for seniors
- Seniors would have to pay more than $2,000 a year out-of-pocket for prescriptions.
- Drug companies would be able to once again raise prices faster than the rate of inflation without penalty.
- Health care coverage for about 23 million people would have been eliminated by 2026
- People with pre-existing conditions could again be denied coverage or charged higher prices
- …. and so much more
THE DETAILS: Jim Jordan Voted For Higher Premiums And Prescription Drug Costs
2021: Jim Jordan, And Every Republican In Congress, Voted Against The Inflation Reduction Act. Jordan joined every Republican in Congress in voting against the Inflation Reduction Act, which “requires the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs under Medicare beginning in 2026,” and “requires drug manufacturers to issue rebates to the CMS for brand-name drugs without generic equivalents under Medicare medical services that cost $100 or more per year per individual and for which prices increase faster than inflation.” [HR 5376, 8/12/21]
- Jordan Has Ties To Drug Industry Special Interests. Jordan has significant ties to the pharmaceutical and drug manufacturing industry, having pocketed just over $28,908 from the industry during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Big drug companies fiercely lobbied against the Inflation Reduction Act, which included provisions allowing the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare.
What The Inflation Reduction Act Means For America:
- The Inflation Reduction Act will save 19 million seniors an average of $400 per year when the $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs goes into effect in 2025.
- Nearly 2 million people have continued to save an average of more than $800 per year from reduced health insurance premiums.
- Insulin co-payments were capped for the 4 million Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin.
- Millions of people with Medicare are receiving recommended vaccines at no cost.
2021: Jim Jordan, And Every Republican In Congress, Voted Against the American Rescue Plan. Jordan joined every Republican in Congress in voting against the American Rescue Plan, which “provide[d] health insurance premium assistance for individuals who become eligible for, and elect to enroll in, the COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) continuation coverage program,” increased the rate of “the refundable tax credit for coverage under qualified health plan”, and “ma[de] individuals who received unemployment compensation in 2021 eligible for cost-sharing subsidies for health care expenses under qualified health insurance plans.” [HR 1319, 3/10/21]
What The American Rescue Plan Meant For America:
- Saved families an average of $2,400 a year on their health insurance premiums.
- Ensured all Americans never pay more than 8.5 percent of their household incomes towards an ACA Marketplace premium.
- Eliminated premiums for people earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level who buy their coverage on the ACA Marketplace.
- Extended the premium tax credit to 3.1 million Americans.
2019: Jim Jordan Voted Against HR 3. Jordan joined all but two House Republicans in voting against the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (HR 3), which would have lowered the cost of prescription drug prices by “empowering the federal government to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.” HR 3 would have required the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate maximum prices for insulin, new and existing single-source brand-name drugs without generics, the top drugs expensed through Medicare and Medicare Advantage, and would have set price ceilings at 120% of the average price in similar countries or 85% of the price for domestic manufacturers.
What HR 3 Meant For America:
- HR 3 would have established a fair price negotiation program including an out-of-pocket maximum for Medicare Part D beneficiaries.
- The bill would have protected tens of millions of Americans enrolled in Medicare from excessive price increases.
- Drug prices would have fallen significantly for people in America.
Jim Jordan Opposes The ACA And Its Protections For 1 in 2 Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions
Jim Jordan Has Opposed The Affordable Care Act Since Its Inception. Since taking office in 2007, Jim Jordan has been a relentless opponent of the Affordable Care Act, including voting against initial passage of the law and sponsoring at least 10 attempts to repeal or substantially alter the law.
2017: Jim Jordan Voted For Trump’s Disastrous ACA Replacement. In 2017, Jim Jordan was part of the frantic Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health coverage and protections for pre-existing conditions for millions of Americans, voting for the passage of the American Health Care Act. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #256, 5/4/17]
What Did AHCA Mean for America?
- Approximately 1 in 2 people in America with pre-existing conditions would have lost protections for coverage.
- 23 million people would have lost coverage under this bill by 2026
- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the American Health Care Act would have raised premiums by 20 percent.
- The negative economic impact of the American Health Care Act would have caused 1.8 million people to lose their jobs by 2022.
2015: Jim Jordan Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. Jordan voted for HR 596, an act “to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.” The bill also ordered House committees to develop a replacement that would “provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage,” but provided no specifics. [HR 596, Roll Call Vote #58, 2/3/15]
2013: Jim Jordan Staged A Government Shutdown In An Attempt to Defund the Affordable Care Act. In October 2013, the federal government ground to a halt for over two weeks after the Republican-led House of Representatives demanded that legislation to continue funding the government include provisions defunding the Affordable Care Act. Jordan was an “architect” of the 2013 shutdown, and fellow Republicans have blamed him and his far-right allies for leading the shutdown fight. Then-Speaker John Boehner later called Jordan a “legislative terrorist” for his brinkmanship, stating: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
2010: Jim Jordan Voted Against the ACA. Jordan voted against HR 3590, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in March 2010. [HR 2590, Roll Call Vote #165, 3/21/10]
Jim Jordan Voted To Slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
2023: Jim Jordan and the Far-Right Freedom Caucus Released A Budget Proposal With Deep Cuts To Medicaid Enrollment. In March, the far-right Freedom Caucus – which Jordan founded in 2015 – proposed a budget plan that will cut over $3 trillion in non-defense spending, taking aim specifically at health care programs like Medicaid. One of the major restructuring of the program would be the institution of strict work requirements in order to access Medicaid. All research on the subject shows that work requirements reduce dramatically the number of people who can access Medicaid. Almost two-thirds, or 62 percent, of those who would lose their Medicaid coverage as a result of work requirements are women and disproportionately women of color. Also, even though the Freedom Caucus is claiming this is an attempt to cut spending to needless bureaucracy, time and time again Medicaid work requirements end up costing more money to implement and maintain than traditional Medicaid or Medicaid Expansion. Georgia’s new Medicaid work requirements require the state to develop “expensive administrative processes,” estimated to cost upwards of $270 million annually to implement, nearly 3 times more than Medicaid Expansion would cost.
2017: Jim Jordan Voted To Cut Medicare By $473 Billion. Jordan voted for the FY 2018 budget resolution, which included $473 billion in cuts to Medicare over 10 years. [H Con Res 71, Vote #557, 10/5/17; Vox, 10/26/17]
2017: Jim Jordan Voted To Slash $1.3 Trillion From Medicaid. Jordan voted for the FY 2018 budget resolution, which cut funding for non-Medicare health programs, most notably Medicaid, by 1.3 trillion, a 20 percent cut over the course of 10 years, increasing to a 29.3 percent cut by 2027. [H Con Res 71, Vote #557, 10/5/17; Vox, 10/26/17]
2017: Jim Jordan Voted For AHCA, Which Cut $880 Billion From Medicaid. Jordan voted for AHCA, which included $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #256, 5/4/17]
- Vox Called AHCA A “Sneaky” Reversal Of The Medicaid Expansion. “Medicaid, a government program that simply compensates health care providers at stingy rates, is much cheaper than private insurance. So the ACA’s authors chose to expand it to cover all families with incomes below 138 percent of the poverty line, rather than shelling out the money it would have cost to have the government pay for them to buy private insurance. The AHCA reverses this expansion. But to avoid the criticism that the law throws poor children off their health insurance, it reverses it in a somewhat sneaky way. Rather than taking Medicaid away from families who have it, it simply caps new enrollments in Medicaid so no new poor families can sign up. But the way this cap works, you can’t get back on Medicaid if you go off of it. So a poor family that gets a raise and becomes non-poor for a year will lose access to Medicaid permanently.” [Vox, 5/9/17]