I say to Sen. McConnell, who I have known for many years, please do not tell the people of Kentucky or America that the $45 billion for opioid addiction that you may include in this bill will compensate for the huge cuts this bill mandates for Medicaid
Planned Parenthood
Further, this legislation denies 2.5 million women the health care they need by defunding Planned Parenthood. What this means is that the Planned Parenthood health centers in Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati could be forced to close leaving over 3,200 patients without the care they desperately need. Unacceptable!
Letters
Brothers and sisters: Each and every day, I receive letters and e-mails from people in my state of Vermont and throughout the country who have told me what would happen to them if this disastrous bill becomes law.
Here's one from a mother who wrote: "My adult son has Down's Syndrome. He can barely get by with what few Medicaid services are available now. Please don't punish my son for needing these services."
Here's one from a father who says: "TrumpCare will allow insurance companies to deny health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. In my family, this could disqualify my son, born with a defective heart valve, who must have costly open-heart transplant surgery to get a new valve every 10 to 14 years " and my grandchild with genetic hearing loss.
Another letter: "I'm 38. I'm well educated and had a great job. But I developed a chronic migraine. I am so disabled, I can no longer work. I just qualified for Medicaid. It will be my lifeline as I fight daily pain and other debilitating symptoms. If the bill passes, I fear that it will become a choice between draining my family's financial resources--even facing bankruptcy--so that I can continue to access the limited medical treatments I have that help my condition, or lose insurance altogether. I do not want to let my family go bankrupt. This law is not health care and if it passes, people will suffer and die. I can personally attest to that."
Another letter: "I am a psychologist. Most of my patients, many of them dealing with the experiences of autism, trauma, eating disorders, and/or anxiety, can only receive services because they are covered by health insurance. This disastrous bill could allow insurance companies to deny coverage for mental health diagnoses, making it very difficult for the bulk of my patients to access services."
My friends: This legislation is not what the American people want. Poll after poll shows overwhelming opposition. According to the latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll, just 12 percent of the American people support the Senate Republican "health care" plan.
As a matter of fact, according to a recent report, this is the most unpopular piece of legislation in the last three decades. It is more unpopular than the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. It is even more unpopular than George W. Bush's legislation to privatize Social Security!
All of which raises a very simple question. Why is legislation being aggressively pushed that the American people don't want and, at the same time, will do enormous damage to the Senate Republican leader's very own state? How does that happen?
And the answer goes to something which is even deeper and more serious than this horrific legislation and the overall health care crisis we face as a nation.
The answer as to why this legislation is being pushed is that, increasingly, government does not respond to the needs of ordinary Americans, and does not care about the needs of ordinary Americans. Especially since the passage of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Congress responds to wealthy campaign contributors. It responds to the power of the billionaire class. It responds to multi-national corporations and their lobbyists.
Yes. The American people, overwhelmingly, do not want this legislation. Yes. This legislation will be a disaster for the working families of Kentucky. But that's not what's important here. What's important is that the wealthiest people in this country DO want this legislation, they do want the enormous tax breaks in it and, for Congress, that's what matters the most.
You all know what's going on in America today. The rich are getting much richer, while almost everyone else is becoming poorer. You know that over the last 40 years, the great middle class of this country has been in decline and that today we have more income and wealth any inequality than any other major country on earth. Today in America, unbelievably, the top 0.1 percent now own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. You know that at a time when Americans are working incredibly long hours, 52 percent of all new income being generated goes to the top 1 percent.
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