Trump and the Republicans’ broken healthcare promises

From the campaign trail to the White House, President Trump made a promise to every American that he would deliver greater access to health insurance, that he would improve the coverage people receive, and that all of it would cost far less than we pay now.

Today the House of Representatives voted and passed the American Health Care Act. The sad reality is that this piece of legislation breaks each one of President Trump’s promises on health care reform.

This bill will cause 24 million Americans to lose their health insurance. It cuts more than $800 billion from Medicaid, flying in the face of our country’s promise to care for our parents and our grandparents living in nursing homes. Medicaid provides the lion’s share of  nursing home and long-term care funding for the elderly, treatment for  people with disabilities,  health care for working families and disadvantaged children. Many states, including the First State, rely on Medicaid funding to combat the opioid epidemic that’s ravaging our communities. In fact, Medicaid accounts for 40 percent of Delaware’s payments to treat substance abuse disorders.

This bill puts Americans, and more than 150,000 Delawareans, with preexisting conditions back at the mercy of insurance companies. Whether it’s a child with asthma or autism, a pregnant mother, a domestic abuse survivor, a father with cancer or a recovering addict—under this bill, insurance companies can look to their bottom line to decide who deserves health care and at what cost. 

These are just a few of the many reasons why healthcare experts, medical professionals, and advocates for seniors, the disabled, and children have all come out strongly against this bill. That’s why I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that this bill does not pass the U.S. Senate.

I believe we must do better, and that an undertaking of this magnitude must be done on a bipartisan basis. Republicans should work with Democrats to improve our health care system so that it’s more affordable for hardworking Americans. The bill passed in the House of Representatives today doesn’t do that. 

Americans are counting on us to chart a better path forward. I, like so many of my colleagues, am passionate about improving our health care system, ensuring equal access to health care for all Americans, and reducing health care costs that have become unaffordable for middle-class Americans and small businesses. I stand ready to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do what’s right for our country.