I’ll post statements on the latest version of the godawful “Trumpcare” monstrosity here…
From Sen. Tim Kaine:
KAINE STATEMENT ON LATEST VERSION OF SENATE REPUBLICAN HEALTH CARE BILL
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement on the release of the latest version of the Senate Republican health care bill:
“I’m hearing from Virginians what other Senators are hearing from their constituents across the country: drop this horrible bill and instead work together on bipartisan fixes to the health care system. None of the versions of TrumpCare meet the President’s promises that no one will lose health insurance or pay more for coverage, and that Medicaid will be protected. This newest version of the bill includes a provision that would allow insurers to sell skimpy health plans that will mean even higher premiums for Americans with pre-existing conditions and would destabilize the existing ACA marketplace. I’ve traveled across Virginia talking to parents, kids, teachers, doctors, and nurses about the health care system and what we should do to make it better. Just this week, mothers in Northern Virginia shared their concerns with me about what the Republican bill would mean for their kids with complex medical conditions who rely on Medicaid to get the care they need. We should be listening to them, abandoning TrumpCare, and working together on solutions – like the bills many of us have put forward – that would lower costs and improve health care for all Americans.”
Kaine has been a leading voice calling on Republicans to work across the aisle with Democrats on proposals to improve the health care system that could get bipartisan support, including the reinsurance bill he introduced earlier this month to help stabilize the individual health care marketplace and lower premiums, which would help families in Virginia and across the country.
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From Progress Virginia:
Senate “Health Care” Bill Just a Tax Cut for the Ultra Wealthy
Washington, DC—Senate Republicans released an updated version of their health care bill today, aiming to cobble together 50 votes. While the Congressional Budget Office has not yet had an opportunity to score the bill to say how many people will lose health insurance coverage in the new version of the bill, any bill that cuts Medicaid spending by $772 billion in favor of giving the wealthy elite a tax cut won’t work for our families.
“The Senate health care bill is what happens when the people writing the bill like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump care more about wealthy campaign donors than the health of hardworking families,” Anna Scholl, Executive Director of Progress Virginia, said Thursday. “Everyone deserves to have the opportunity to work hard and follow their dreams, but when they can’t even afford to see a doctor when they are sick, that’s impossible. We need a health care bill that helps hardworking families in our communities, not the ultra wealthy.”
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the first version of the Senate bill would cause 22 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act resulted in more than 20 million people enrolling in health insurance programs.
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Sen. Mark Warner
There has been a lot of discussion over the last couple of months about how we fix healthcare. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side have put forward legislation that in my tenure in politics may be the worst piece of legislation I have ever seen.
[It is] legislation that provides a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, and at the price of, at least in the previous legislation, 22 million Americans would lose their healthcare as well as a massive transfer of responsibility of about 800 billion dollars from the federal government to the states in terms of Medicaid. And too often in many of those states these changes would result in dramatic cuts to Medicaid. Cuts that would affect our parents or grandparents in nursing homes, cuts that would affect children, cuts that would affect the disabled. These are cuts that we cannot afford.
Now, I have been the first to acknowledge that there are many places in the Affordable Care Act that need fixing. The truth is that Congress never gets major legislation 100% right the first time.
Unfortunately over the last six or seven years, so many of our Republican colleagues have not been willing to sit down and work with us on how we might fix healthcare. My hope is that after their legislative attempts fail, that our Republican colleagues would sit down with us as Democrats and say how do we keep what’s good about Obamacare, the ACA, and how do we change what’s wrong?
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