For Immediate Release: Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Contact: Laura Brandon, laura.brandon@
Senate GOP Bill Will Wreck America’s Health Care to Give Tax Breaks to the Rich
Closed-Door Process Produces Near-Copy of the Disastrous House Bill That Kicks Millions Off Insurance, Jeopardizes Care for People with Pre-existing Conditions and Slashes Medicaid to Give Tax Cuts to the Very Wealthy and Drug and Insurance Companies
The following is a statement from Margarida Jorge and Ethan Rome, co-directors of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), in response to leaks of the Senate GOP repeal bill.
“It’s easy to focus on the minor differences between the Senate and the House bills, but the differences are a distraction. The real comparison here is between the health care families currently have and what they will lose in both these proposals. Just like the House bill, the Senate bill will do two things: it wrecks America’s health care in a way that will touch the lives of everyone in our country, and it takes from America’s poor and working families to fund tax breaks to the richest people and corporations.
“Just like the House bill, the Senate bill will fundamentally reshape America’s health care and one sixth of the economy. The bill – crafted behind closed-doors and rushed to a vote – will take away health care from millions of poor, working and middle-class families. It will weaken coverage and consumer protections for everyone with private health insurance. It will eliminate the Medicaid expansion and end Medicaid’s guarantee of coverage for children, seniors, and people with disabilities. It defunds Planned Parenthood, a core part of this nation’s system for providing preventive and reproductive health care. It inflicts this monumental amount of harm to millions of Americans to give massive tax breaks to the very wealthy and insurance and drug companies.
“Just like the House bill, the Senate bill does the opposite of what a health care measure should do – it makes people pay more to get less. That’s not just bad policy; it’s unconscionable.”
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Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is the national grassroots coalition that ran a $60 million five-and-a-half year campaign from 2008-2013 to pass, protect, and promote the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and protect Medicare and Medicaid. HCAN has come back together to fight the Republicans’ all-out effort to take away America’s health care and put people at the mercy of the health insurance companies again.
