Washington, D.C. — Tonight, President Donald Trump kicked off his nationwide ‘Scam America’ tour in Pennsylvania after trying to frame the GOP’s affordability crisis as a Democratic ‘con job.’ Since taking office, Trump and congressional Republicans have masterminded a ferocious assault on working people’s health care. First, they ransacked over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. The fallout is so devastatingly widespread that 19 Pennsylvania hospitals, nursing homes, and other critical providers have shuttered or are at risk of disappearing out of thin air, ballooning health care costs for working folks.
Now, the GOP is hell-bent on ripping away ACA tax credits that over 400,000 Pennsylvanians rely on for affordable health care, doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling their health insurance premiums. Their health care affordability crisis is wreaking havoc across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the nation — shuttering hospitals and maternity wards and hiking working people’s health care costs to unaffordable, once unimaginable levels.
“Donald Trump showed working Pennsylvanians just how out-of-touch he is,” said Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse. “Trump’s rambling speech gaslighting the American people about rising prices proves that Republicans have no interest in delivering relief to American families. But the GOP can’t even recognize that. They can’t understand that their premium hikes are shutting down small businesses. They can’t conceptualize that doubling, tripling, and quadrupling health care costs is throwing families into crippling debt. They can’t even fathom — or don’t even care — that they are pricing thousands of working Americans out of life-essential insurance. While Trump is touting his K-shaped economy at a swanky casino, he and his GOP allies are gambling with real people’s lives.”