INDIANAPOLIS – President Trump on Tuesday described the Republican bill overhauling the health care system which Congressman Messer and Congressman Rokita supported as “mean” and called for the Senate’s bill to be more generous than the House’s, the AP reported.
It would seem fair to call the Republican health care overhaul “mean,” as were it to become law, it would prevent roughly 23 million Americans from keeping health insurance, according to recent reports by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The bill Congressman Messer and Rokita supported would gut funding for HIP 2.0 in Indiana and cut Medicaid by $800 billion nationwide—not just reducing coverage for impoverished and working class Americans, but causing irreparable harm to programs like those working on opioid addiction, children with developmental disabilities, and nursing home care for seniors. Additionally, their bill would allow health insurers to discriminate against Americans with pre-existing conditions and charge astronomically high rates to women who are pregnant or anyone who has suffered from cancer or other illnesses.
But while President Trump’s comments were an apparent attempt to get a more lenient health care system out of the legislative process, the bill likely to come out of the Senate is set to be just as mean. The Senate proposal is currently being negotiated in private among the Republican caucus; however, recent reports still suggest their legislation will look very similar to the House bill, including its massive Medicaid cuts and lack of protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
“President Trump’s not wrong when he describes the health care bill that Congressman Messer and Rokita voted for as “mean,” but for possibly the first time in his life, he’s guilty of understatement,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Congressmen Messer’s and Rokita’s bill would strip away health care from hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers and raise costs on countless Indiana families. When even their own Republican President thinks their bill is too mean, it’s time for Congressmen Messer and Rokita to decide if they’re interested in helping anyone besides Republican hard-liners in Washington.”
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