Posted on 07/24/2017 5:51:04 PM PDT by JayGalt
Dear Friend,
It’s a new week here in Washington and that means another week fighting back Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and sabotage our health care system. It’s such a cruel thing to do to millions of American families, especially when Democrats like me are ready to sit down and talk about real solutions to strengthen the ACA, not kill it. Is it really impossible for Republicans to pull the plug on partisanship and work with us?
It wasn’t that long ago when Democrats faced a tough political choice: Sink an unpopular new Republican health care law (with a disastrous roll-out); or, work with Republicans to fix it.
I wrote about why we chose to fix it, and why Republicans should do the same today.
Read my op-ed below (or read online here) and if you agree, please use this link to share it.
In 2003, when President George Bush and the Republican Congress passed the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, I voted against it. Like most Democrats, I couldn’t support a plan that left millions of seniors – including my mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s – with huge prescription drug bills under what would later become known as the Medicare “donut hole.”
But once Part D became law, Democrats didn’t fight to repeal it. Not even after the program’s disastrous rollout in 2006, when seniors were literally turned away from pharmacies nationwide. Unlike Republicans in Congress, who today remain fixated on destroying the ACA, we didn’t try to defund it, or undermine it in the courts, or smear it for political gain. Nor did President Barack Obama try to sabotage it.
Instead, Democrats made improving a Republican-designed prescription drug program a cornerstone of health care reform. When we finally passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, we included measures to close the Part D “donut hole” – reforms that have since saved New Jersey’s seniors over $1.3 billion, and more than $26 billion for Medicare beneficiaries nationwide.
For us, the prize wasn’t about destroying a program signed into law by a Republican president. It was about ensuring that America’s seniors never had to choose between eating and refilling their medications. Indeed, Democrats have always been clear about our motivations. We believe that all Americans deserve health care – no matter where they live, how much money they make, or what medical conditions they may have.
However, it remains unclear what Republicans hope to achieve with their vendetta against Obamacare. For seven years, they attacked the ACA for political gain, pledging to repeal and replace it with something better. But the American people overwhelmingly rejected their cruel plan to lavish the top 1 percent with tax cuts they don’t need, paid for by taking health care away from those who need it most.
When their bill was pronounced dead earlier this week, Democrats made clear that our offer for bipartisan cooperation was still alive. Their partisan process failed. We must return to regular order so that committees can do their work, hold public hearings and develop bipartisan solutions to stabilize the private market, lower premiums and reduce costs for everyone.
Unfortunately, Republicans have dug in their heels, rebuffing calls for bipartisanship. If Republican leaders cannot flip enough of their members to support their wildly unpopular plan, this week they will likely vote to repeal the ACA with no replacement at all. This reckless act would strip 32 million Americans of their coverage, double premiums and leave three out of four Americans with just one insurer, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
New Jerseyans would suffer tremendously under an all-out repeal, with nearly 840,000 people losing coverage by 2026. Our state’s budget woes would go from bleak to catastrophic, with federal health funding for New Jersey cut by $4.2 billion each year and 86,000 jobs destroyed. And everyone would lose the ACA’s protections against insurance company abuses, like imposing lifetime limits on care, or dropping coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
It’s time that Republicans drop this destructive repeal effort and pledge to do no harm.
Read the full op-ed here.
It may not be clear. I just received this email from Menendez. How he got my email is not clear since we are not email buddies. I responded to the email & then wrote him directly. Its my first email from him so I think he is worried & trying to get his spin out there.
Well I for one, am a Republican and I am NOT on the side opposed to Obamacare, because the option is currently not an improvement.
I am all for improving Obamacare.
But I am NOT for just repealing it. What we need to do, is maintain the protections for individuals, in Obamacare. Then if you want to also offer all sorts of things to Americans fine.
But there is a core constituency which needs to be protected. That was, with Obamacare.
Keep that protection.
Do NOT allow any GOP option, which withdraws coverage for the base.
That is important.
I'm confused. Why does a Democrat think Obamacare requires "solutions"?
Did the Democrats make MISTAKES when they foisted this upon the American people? If they did, let them talk about what the MISTAKES were before they suggest "solutions."
ML/NJ
I am still waiting for someone to explain to me where the government gets the authority to force me to buy something I don’t want. Insurance.
Where is "here"? (And I don't do Facebook since they demanded a government issued photo ID from me a couple of years ago.)
ML/NJ
Obamacare allowed hundreds of thousands who were previously paying for their own health insurance to be added to the ‘Medicaid’ rolls. That means many who were paying for themselves are now getting their health insurance on the backs of hard working taxpayers. WHY? Obamacare is exponentially more expensive than previous health insurance was. Open up the free market and let people negotiate their own policies. Don’t allow the Government to order Senior citizens to pay for maternity care. Lots of ways to bring health insurance down......but nobody wants to do it.
Obamacare can’t be improved. The basic concept is flawed.
It is unconstitutional to force Americans to buy a product.
It is socialism to have healthy people pay more for less coverage so that sicker ones can get cheaper healthcare.
Obamacare substitutes insurance for care and the necessary larger deductibles bankrupt ordinary Americans.
Obamacare mingles the very large population of average Americans that can pay for the level of health insurance they want with the relatively much smaller population of impoverished and uninsurable Americans and in doing so is terrible for both segments. Than doesn’t even account for the hours lost signing up, the surprise “you need to give back your subsidy” and the bureaucrats deciding what care you can receive.
Medical insurance, for the average American would be much less expensive with HSA plans and the ability to tailor to the time of life & circumstances. Also cheaper with competition and without the need to support Obamacare generated layers of bureaucracy, in the doctors office, the insurance company & in the Government. Obamacare is truly an abomination feeding on the life blood of our country.
The Obamacare law has no protections for individuals, just words. Care has been lost and fragmented. We need to get the Government out of individual health insurance just like car insurance. Let the Government concentrate on a saftey net for the poor and the uninsurable and on credits that individuals close to the poverty line can use to pay for private health insurance.
Those are the things that the current health care act is attempting to do. The Government involvement is the problem not the solution. The responsibilities for the saftey net should be devolved back to the States in graduated steps over a 5-10 year period so that the savings of rolling back the regulations & encouraging competition will allow the States to carry the cost.
I don’t do facebook either. Menendez says he has it posted. He gave a second link:
https://outreach.senate.gov/iqextranet/iqClickTrk.aspx?&cid=quorum_menendez-iq&crop=15389.21018078.9143200.7871631&report_id=Record-link&redirect=http%3a%2f%2fwww.northjersey.com%2fstory%2fopinion%2fcontributors%2f2017%2f07%2f21%2frx-health-care-reform-bipartisanship%2f497788001%2f&redir_log=362411255307740
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