Repu080604.Americans.hungryblicans just released their replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, and while they are set to keep some of the more popular parts of Obamacare, such as pre-existing conditions and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plan, it also contains new laws that will make it harder for people who are low income to keep their health insurance and worse. Don’t let the few popular provisions that the House GOP left in the Obamacare replacement fool you – this bill is just another give-away to the rich and insurance companies at the expense of the most vulnerable and poor in our nation. No one who supports a pro-life agenda should support a plan that would…

  • Replace income-based premium subsidies with age-based ones that may not provide as much assistance to people with low incomes
  • Stop the expansion of Medicaid to additional low-earning Americans in 2020. After that, states adding Medicaid recipients would no longer receive the additional federal funds Obama’s law has provided.
  • Overhaul the federal-state Medicaid program, changing its open-ended federal financing to a limit based on enrollment and costs in each state.
  • Provide less financial assistance for low-income and older people than ObamaCare, but could give more assistance to younger people and those with higher incomes. 
  • Allow insurers to charge people 30 percent higher premiums if they have a gap in coverage.
  • Strips funding for Planned Parenthood and most family-planning/women’s health clinics, which has been proven to actually lead to an increase in abortions and would end availability of vital health services for women. Abortion is already not funded by the federal government, so stripping the funding to these clinics will only strip healthcare and affordable contraception services.

Republicans say they know their plan will cover fewer people. Democrats warn that between the phasing out of ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion and the smaller tax credit for poorer people, the 20 million people who gained coverage in recent years will be put at risk.

Christian Democrats of America mailed Bibles to Republican Congressmen who are vocal about being “pro-life Christians” in a protest effort on behalf of the vulnerable and poor who will be affected by the repeal of the ACA. One of the scriptures sent to the House GOP and Speaker Paul Ryan was the following:

Isaiah 10:1-3

10 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
    to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
    and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
    and robbing the fatherless.
What will you do on the day of reckoning,
    when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
    Where will you leave your riches?

They cannot call themselves “pro-life Christians” and not stand up for the poor and vulnerable.

Information sources: AP, The Hill, NY Times