“If you care about your healthcare bills, you need to care about this”
PENNSYLVANIA — Republicans stand ready to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and again attempt to strip health care from millions of people across the United States, and we should take them seriously, according to the latest from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
“What has happened once can happen again. That’s reason enough to take GOP threats literally and seriously. And it’s reason enough to make sure they do not prevail,” John Micek writes.
Republican lawmakers, and candidates for Senate and Governor in Pennsylvania are championing an agenda of jeopardizing coverage, raising costs and refusing to tackle prescription drug prices. With a far-right field of candidates including New Jersey’s own Dr. Oz and Connecticut hedge fund manager Dave McCormick who would be votes to repeal the ACA in the U.S. Senate, threats to health care are top-of-mind for Pennsylvanians. In the Governor’s race Pennsylvanians are left wondering if the far-right GOP candidates would reverse Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s Medicaid expansion, which has provided health care coverage to more than 900,000 in the commonwealth.
In case you missed it…
Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Does the GOP want to repeal Obamacare? Take them literally and seriously
[…]More than a decade on from its introduction, and its successful passage into law, hundreds of millions of Americans have since benefited from the Affordable Care Act’s ban on the denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions, as well as a Medicaid expansion that has benefited tens of millions more people.
That includes Pennsylvania, where 992,000 people were enrolled in the expansion as of April 2021, A total of 3.3 million people who were enrolled in Medicaid and the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program during that same time period, data showed.
While it had a troubled adolescence, the law has only grown in popularity, with a clear majority of Americans (55 percent) telling Kaiser Health they supported the law in 2020 as the U.S. Supreme Court took up a challenge to the law, Forbes reported. That included Republicans who favored the preexisting condition ban.
But that has not proven an impediment for the GOP, which remains as steadfast in its opposition as ever — even if it cost them the U.S. House in 2018.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., whom I’m convinced most often says things just to hear himself talk, was forced to backtrack in the face of scorching criticism after he told Breitbart News that repealing the ACA should be a priority for Republicans if they won back Congress and the White House in 2024, the Washington Post reported.
[…]The head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign wing, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, of Florida, already has rolled out a stupendously wrong-headed policy agenda that takes a sledgehammer to the nation’s social safety net, even as it raises taxes on the poorest Americans.
[…]But the fact that Republicans are talking seriously about this is worrying enough. Even if it faces a guaranteed White House veto, it’s not hard to imagine reinvigorated GOP majorities in the House and Senate trying to repeal the law in 2023, even as they work to stymie President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda heading into 2024.
Hence this week’s press call, one of the many that Democrats have been holding over the past few months to tout the components of Biden’s agenda — from jobs and COVID to infrastructure and school funding — as they try to rally Democrats ahead of a tough campaign season.
“We know that Pennsylvanians and all Americanas need support, and that they want leaders who will work tirelessly to improve their lives,” U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, D-7th District, whose Lehigh Valley-based seat is a takeover target for the GOP, said Tuesday. ” … A Republican majority would be devastating for Americans.”
[…]The pandemic, which cost us so much, underlined the importance of the nation’s healthcare system. And so many sick Americans were able to obtain treatment because of the coverage they had through the Affordable Care Act.
What has happened once can happen again. That’s reason enough to take GOP threats literally and seriously. And it’s reason enough to make sure they do not prevail.
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