Letter: A letter to Congressional Republicans

Published 1:00 am Monday, May 15, 2017

To Paul Ryan, and all Republicans in Congress who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with Ryan-Trump Care, you just voted to have 24 million Americans lose access to life-saving preventive care, treatment and emergency procedures. American families will once again go bankrupt trying to cover medical costs, and they will die from heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, pneumonia, asthma attacks or car crashes on icy Minnesota highways. You intend to take this massive funding cut and give a $1 trillion tax break to the wealthiest people in America.

You voted to cut $880 billion from Medicaid health coverage for poor and disabled children, adults and seniors. You voted to destroy the quality of our health insurance, by eliminating the national minimum benefit set, which provided basic standards for health services. You voted to allow health insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, and to charge seniors more for their insurance than young people.

Unbelievably, you passed the bill with no revised Congressional Budget Office analysis of cost or insurance coverage loss. You held no public hearings, posted the bill online for 10 hours and voted. Many congress members did not read the bill before voting (there was no time)! This legislation impacts one-sixth of the U.S. economy and is opposed by most major health care delivery, public heath and medical professional organizations in the U.S.

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Your own congressional Cadillac health insurance remains protected (purchased through the District of Columbia), while millions of Americans now face disease, disability and death. After the vote, you held a beer kegger at the White House to celebrate. Your lack of morality and ethics is breathtaking. Unfortunately you forgot that you were elected to serve the constituents of your legislative district and your community. Goodbye to your political careers in the mid-term election in 2018.

Martha Roberts

St. Paul