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protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement After Another Awful Day for Graham-Cassidy

Today was perhaps the worst day yet for Graham-Cassidy, the GOP’s latest secret, partisan health care repeal bill which would raise costs, lower options, remove protection for pre-existing conditions and end Medicaid as we know it. A new poll found just one-fifth of voters supporting the bill; CBO analysis found “millions” would lose their insurance; and Sen. Susan Collins announced her opposition to the legislation, calling it “as deeply flawed as the previous iterations.” In response, Protect Our Care Campaign Director Brad Woodhouse released the following statement:

“Today’s developments represent more major setbacks for the latest secretive, partisan effort to repeal the health care of the American people,” said Woodhouse. “A new CBS News poll this morning pegged support for the Graham-Cassidy repeal effort at a paltry 20 percent and terrible reviews of the latest draft poured in from expert voices and stakeholders across the country. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the Congressional Budget Office released a partial analysis of the bill this afternoon which confirmed what every independent analysis has shown — that Graham-Cassidy repeal would strip millions of coverage and slash Medicaid. And to top it all off, Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she is a hard no on the bill.
 
“It should now be abundantly clear that partisan repeal is a loser both politically and substantively and that it’s time for Republicans to stop partisan repeal and return to bipartisan efforts to improve health care which were underway before Republicans pulled the plug. Until they do, the calls will continue, the ads will stay up and millions of Americans will write, email, tweet and protest until the effort to strip millions of health care and spike costs for millions more is dead, once and for all.”

protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement on Trump Administration’s Continued Health Care Sabotage

Washington, D.C. — During a webinar this afternoon, HHS announced that HealthCare.gov would be offline 5 out of the 6 Sundays during the upcoming open enrollment period. This means that during the shortest open enrollment period ever, HealthCare.gov will be down for 3 full days. Today’s announcement follows recent decisions by the administration to cut navigator funding by 40 percent and the outreach and advertising budget by 90 percent.

“This is outrageous. It’s clear that even if Republicans continue to fail to repeal the Affordable Care Act that the Trump administration will go to any lengths to sabotage the law,” said Brad Woodhouse, Campaign Director for Protect Our Care. “From destabilizing the health care market by threatening not to pay cost sharing reduction payments to undermining open enrollment, the Trump Administration will pursue every tactic to undermine health care no matter how many Americans it hurts. The American people are sick of it — they oppose repeal and they will hold President Trump and Republicans in Congress accountable for sabotaging their health care.”


protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement on Sen. John McCain’s Announcement in Opposition to Graham-Cassidy

“Senator McCain established a test which all Senators should follow on health care: reforms to an issue of this importance and magnitude should be addressed on a bipartisan basis and should follow regular Senate procedure including hearings and expert witnesses. Graham-Cassidy fails this test in every regard, and Senator McCain is right to oppose this latest effort at partisan repeal,” said Brad Woodhouse, Campaign Director for Protect Our Care.

“But beyond process, Senators should oppose this latest repeal effort because it would devastate our health care system. Graham-Cassidy has been called radical and the worst of all repeal bills, and rightly so. It would deny coverage to 32 million Americans, end Medicaid expansion, undermine traditional Medicaid, impose an age tax on seniors and end protections against discrimination for people with pre-existing conditions. Graham-Cassidy is bad on process as Senator McCain has rightly noted, but it would be a dumpster fire for the American health care system. It’s time for Senator Mitch McConnell to set this partisan bill aside and allow bipartisan efforts to stabilize our health care system to move forward.”

protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement on Introduction of Graham-Cassidy-Heller

Washington, D.C. — Today, GOP Senators Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Dean Heller and Ron Johnson introduced yet another bill to repeal the health care of the American people that would slash coverage, raise costs, eliminate protections and gut Medicaid. This desperate bill comes after three failed Senate repeal votes and a declaration from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that “it is time to move on,” and amidst the bipartisan hearings more than a dozen GOP senators have called for. The renewed partisan effort to repeal health care threatens the bipartisan efforts that began in earnest last week. In response to the GOP’s attempt to revive the least-popular piece of legislation in three decades, Protect Our Care Campaign Director Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement:

“Time and again, the American people have made explicitly clear that they do not want partisan health care repeal. The Graham-Cassidy-Heller bill is as bad or worse than the GOP’s previous efforts to repeal health care. It contains deep cuts to Medicaid, would eliminate payments to help lower out-of-pocket cost and deductibles and guts protections for people with pre-existing conditions, while disproportionately harming states that expanded Medicaid over those that did not. In short, it’s everything voters of both parties have said they don’t want.

“Attempting to jam a partisan repeal bill through the Senate at the eleventh hour is shameful and unnecessarily puts the bipartisan process underway in jeopardy for no reason. It’s time for Republicans to finally abandon their failed, partisan efforts and follow the lead of Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray to focus on making the bipartisan, common sense fixes necessary to improve health care for millions of people.”

protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement on Today’s Senate HELP Committee Hearing on Market Stabilization

Washington, D.C. — Protect Our Care Campaign Director Brad Woodhouse released the following statement in reaction to today’s Senate HELP Committee hearing on the health care marketplace:

“First and foremost, today’s hearing was a notable and welcome departure from the secretive, partisan and ultimately failed repeal effort which President Trump and Senate and House Republicans pursued for the first half of this year,” said Woodhouse. “The mere fact that these hearings are occurring and that bipartisan approaches to market stabilization are being discussed should send a strong signal to the partisan repeal holdouts that it is time to set aside that approach and instead work together to ensure more and more Americans have access to reliable, affordable care. It should also send an unmistakable signal to President Trump that his strategy to sabotage the law is wrong headed and faces bipartisan opposition.

“Substantively, there was broad agreement that Congress must ensure that cost sharing reduction payments continue to be made to lower out of pocket costs for millions of low-income Americans. Every insurance commissioner who testified agreed that ensuring these payments are made must be part of any stabilization plan and nearly all Senators on the panel agreed with that notion. As we have said before, these payments are an essential feature of the health care law, President Trump has been wrong to sow uncertainty in the market by threatening not to pay them and ensuring they continue is among the most important features of any stabilization bill. That there was broad agreement by the panel and the witnesses on the importance of these payments to make health care more affordable for millions of Americans was a welcome sign to say the least.”

protectourcare
In Statement

Protect Our Care Statement on 100% of American Counties Having Access to Affordable Care Act

~The threat to your health care is now Trump and the Republican Congress~

With today’s announcement by the Ohio Insurance Commissioner that Paulding county now has a health insurer, every county in America has a health insurance provider for plans under the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces for coverage next year. In response, Protect Our Care Campaign Director Leslie Dach released the following statement. Dach is a former Senior Counselor at HHS.

“Trump and Republicans in Congress have been rooting for health care to fail. With today’s announcement, their talking points continued to evaporate.

It’s official. The biggest threat to your health care is still sabotage from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.”

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