WA families bracing for larger healthcare bills as open enrollment gets underway

Washington families are bracing for bigger health care bills just as open enrollments gets underway. So today, elected leaders are rolling out new legislation aimed at holding down costs and protecting coverage. Fox 13's Taylor Winkle joins us live from Overlake Medical Center. Taylor, will this impact everyone's insurance rates? Yeah, just about everybody, not just people who get their coverage through the exchange. Senator Maria Cantwell and Congresswoman Kim Schrier are hosting back-to-back health care announcements today just two weeks ahead of the midterm election. The lawmakers are responding to upcoming health care cuts that are tied to the so called big beautiful bill. Those changes take effect in January and state health leaders warn they could cause more than 200,000 Washingtonians to lose Medicare or Medicaid coverage due to stricter work requirements, paperwork hurdles and eligibility shifts they say losing that coverage makes for hardships for uninsured patients and burdens hospitals potentially leading to longer ER wait times and reduced services for everybody senator Cantwell warning Washington hospitals face an estimated 5.8 billion dollar loss under the federal cuts she is speaking in Seattle at 11 this morning and then at 12:30 here at Overlake Congresswoman Kim Schrier will push her new bipartisan insulin act to cap out-of-pocket insulin at $35 a month for all Americans Schrier, who is a pediatrician who lives with type one diabetes and is currently running for reelection says beyond legislation, lawmakers need to target the root causes driving up healthcare costs for everyday families. We can start with taking on vertical integration and making sure that the insurance company does not also own the hospital and the doctors and the pharmacy and the pharmacy benefit manager because that's monopoly and it allows them to gobble up the whole healthcare system and jack up prices. Schrier's opponent Spencer Melanson is also addressing healthcare costs in his campaign. We have reached out to him. We are still waiting to hear back this morning. Meantime on his website, he says he'd like to try to reduce third party and administrative costs, make insurance more competitive and encourage plans that prioritize preventative care We're gonna be following both those press conferences today and let you know what happens. For now, reporting live in Bellevue, I'm Taylor Winkle, Fox 13 News.