Healthcare Over Wealthcare
It’s time for our elected leaders to put #HealthcareOverWealthcare.
Our nation is the richest in the world, yet families from West Virginia to Montana are struggling to afford health care, prescription medicines, childcare, rent and other basic necessities even as corporate profits soar and the gap between the middle class and super wealthy grows.
We can do better: it’s time for Congress and state lawmakers to level the playing field and ensure that everyone in America has a fair shot at real opportunity, economic mobility and prosperity. We need to build an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and corporations.
HCAN’s #HealthcareOverWealthcare campaign is demanding that every lawmaker make a choice to support health care, jobs and opportunity for everyone over more tax breaks and discounts for corporations and rich households.
- FACT: In the first 10 months of COVID, 660 billionaires in the United States increased their wealth by $1.1 trillion dollars. That’s nearly a 40% increase in less than a year’s time. Meanwhile, 73 million people lost work, 12 million people lost health coverage and 100,000 small businesses closed.
- FACT: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that President Trump passed in 2017 cut the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid in order to pay for $1.9 trillion in tax breaks that largely went to the richest fifth of Americans, not to working and middle income people. See the impact in your state.
- FACT: President Biden has proposed a tax plan that would raise over $2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years for investments in jobs, health care, education and infrastructure. His plan would tax people making over $400,000 annually and increase the corporate tax rate so that Wall Street companies pay their fair share.
- FACT: Prescription drug corporations, the most profitable companies in America, get dozens of tax breaks annually including tax write-offs for “business expenses” like marketing, CEO pay, and even on legal settlements they have been ordered to pay in court for their roles in the deadly opioid epidemic.
To rebuild our economy after COVID and create fair opportunities for everyone, no matter where they live, what they look like or what they do for a living, the rich and corporations must pay their fair share–just like the rest of us.
We can “build back better,” by ensuring everyone has access to affordable health care and more choices by implementing a public option, by expanding services in Medicare and Medicaid, by creating jobs that pay good wages, by providing family friendly leave policies and affordable child care–but lawmakers will have to make a choice: will they support jobs, benefits and health care for us or more wealthcare for the rich and corporations?
