All you people out there who voted for Trump and the Republicans, did you want to cut off health care for children through the Child Health Insurance Program? Did you know repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, will bankrupt Medicare? Republicans plan to replace it with a voucher system which will be, perhaps, half as useful and twice as expensive for the Medicare recipient. Is this what you thought you were voting for when you elected them? I don’t believe you are mean-spirited! Israel, who we gave 39 billion dollars this year, provides its people with universal health care.

Loosely quoting John Ludin: Last night, in the middle of the night the Republican Senate voted 51-48.

• To end coverage for pre-existing conditions, veterans benefits and aid to rural hospitals. (50 miles to an ER rural voters)

• To remove discrimination protection for women in health care.

• Against the provisions allowing children to remain on their parent’s insurance until age 26.

• To cut off funding for the Child Health Insurance Program.

• Against ACA contraceptive coverage and maternity care provisions.

• To direct communities to send budget legislation to defund and repeal the ACA. And, for those of you who receive health insurance through work, coverage for pre-existing conditions will be done away with and lifetime caps for coverage will be reinstated for everyone.

Also, did you know this repeal will cost $350 billion in the short-term and over a trillion dollars over ten years? But, the richest 400 families in the nation — Obamacare was largely funded by a tax increase on the very rich among us — will each receive an average $7 million tax cut because of this repeal! This is what matters to Republicans — that their super rich donors pay even less money in taxes so that thousands of poor people can die because they will again have no health insurance. Democratic senators voiced their outrage during this middle-of-the-night vote.

Trump says no one will lose coverage. I guess he’s going to wave a magic wand and come up with a plan. We can believe that just as we can believe he will “drain the swamp” when the combined assets of himself and his cabinet picks are more than the GOP of 79 countries, and that he will release his taxes, and that he has no ties with Russia even though he said in 2007, “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment. . . we will be in Moscow at some point,” and Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that the company had tried to invest in Russia and “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump’s ExxonMobil secretary of state pick had signed a $500 billion oil deal with Putin until Obama’s sanctions nullified that deal. Trump’s words have no credibility. What will it take for you to finally see that?

Lonna Gooden Van Horn

Northwood