Washington, D.C. – Today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) joined Protect Our Care, the Committee to Protect Health Care, and health care advocates to call attention to Trump and the GOP’s continued failure to end their out-of-control health care crisis. Since taking office, Trump and congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to jack up health care costs and keep them sky-high for working families, even staging a government shutdown to avoid giving nearly 22 million Americans back the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that help them see a doctor when they’re sick. Meanwhile, the Trump-GOP Medicaid cuts are shuttering hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes around the country, forcing families to forgo care or drive hours just to see a doctor. As the deadline to enroll in ACA plans for next year fast approaches, Trump and Republicans have an ever-narrowing window to stop putting billionaires first and restore the ACA tax credits favored by the vast majority of the American people.
“We are at a pivotal moment for the health of this nation,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “This isn’t about party or politics. This is about people’s lives. Lives are going to be ruined if you see 22 million Americans with health insurance increases that are simply unaffordable. You have millions of people who will lose their insurance once these premiums go up by 50%, 100%, 200%. You’re going to have a lot of sick people in this country who are no longer going to have access to insurance any longer. The emergency rooms are going to be flooded with people who wait until their conditions are so acute because they have no preventative health coverage. This is a health care cataclysm that’s about to happen. And for what? So that Republicans can protect tax cuts for billionaires and corporations.”
“This year, I will pay a whopping $34,000 annually in premiums and deductibles,” said small business owner and health care advocate Mike Draper of Des Moines, Iowa. “That is more than groceries, mortgage, property taxes, and utilities combined. This is not a right or left problem. This is just a math problem, and the bad news is you cannot outrun math, and you can’t message your way out of math. Extending the ACA tax credits is the bare minimum in the short term. It’s what we need to do to address the crisis right now.”
“If you want to claim to be a champion of small business, you cannot get away with not fixing this issue,” said former small business owner and health care advocate Teresa Acosta of Dunwoody, Georgia. “This is going to affect so many small businesses like it has affected mine. When I saw the writing on the wall of what was happening to our health care back in July, I chose to try to get ahead of it, close my business, and look for a job that would offer me health insurance. I’m not one of those people who can just take a bare minimum insurance plan or just risk it and not cover myself or my kids. My youngest has type 1 diabetes, which is a very expensive illness. I am already living paycheck to paycheck. I’m stretching as far as I can. At this point, I’m not really sure what we’re going to do in January if this isn’t fixed.”
“As a physician, I’ve never witnessed anything like the haphazard attacks on health care that congressional Republicans have been launching,” said Dr. Mandy Swanson, a family physician from Delta, Colorado (CO-03). “As Congressman Hurd and his fellow Republicans continue to play chicken with these tax credits, 7,900 more people in our district stand to lose their care. My patients are going to suffer because Republicans in Congress would rather cater to billionaires. Families and communities across rural Colorado are going to suffer because Republicans would rather cater to billionaires. We will be here long after the Trump presidency is over, and we will remember who fought for us and who fought for billionaires.”
“Right now, too many families are struggling to get by,” said Dr. Jessie Pettit, a family physician from Tucson, Arizona (AZ-06). “A few of my patients have stopped following up with me because they can’t afford rising health care costs, and the looming ACA tax credit cliff is going to prevent even more from coming for care. Across Arizona’s 6th Congressional District 13,900 people will likely lose their access to healthcare due to cost and opt to go without insurance. And that’s on top of the more than 20,000 people in our district who’ll lose their health care benefits because of the Medicaid cuts that Representative Ciscomani backed. Our Republican representatives in Congress should start working for their constituents — my patients — not just billionaires and big corporations.”
“It says a lot about this administration and Republicans in Congress that they just can’t do the right thing here,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Ultimately, this is not only going to cost lives and jobs and families, but it’s going to raise our health care costs, because the most expensive thing we could be doing is to not prevent disease and not take care of people early. And all of this could be easily fixed. This is about as much of a bipartisan issue in the real world as you could ever get. The only place in which partisan games are being played is right here in Washington by the Republican Party.”