In response to the news that President Donald Trump plans to sabotage the core building blocks of the Affordable Care Act through an executive order to repeal the individual mandate and has delayed signing the order in an attempt to get a repeal of the individual mandate into the GOP tax bill, Protect Our Care Campaign Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement:
“This is absurd,” said Woodhouse. “President Trump continues to play politics with people’s health care and sabotage the Affordable Care Act to pay for tax cuts for the super rich. The American people have made clear time and again that they do not support repeal, and repealing the mandate, whether by executive order or legislation, would unravel the Affordable Care Act and sow chaos in the health insurance market. This latest health care sabotage would raise premiums 20 percent and kick 15 million people off of their health insurance to pay for millionaires and billionaires to get a massive tax cut. It’s immoral and wrong to sacrifice the health care of millions of people so Trump’s children won’t have to pay taxes on what they inherit and so hedge fund managers and Wall Street financiers can continue to pay less tax on their earnings than their secretaries.
“Taking away health care for millions of people to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy few has sunk previous repeal attempts, as well as the approval rating of the President and congressional Republicans. Adding health care repeal to the tax bill should doom this legislation, as well. It’s time to move on from repeal.”