Speak up against changes to Medicaid, our healthcare
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One out of eight Virginians depends on Medicaid to pay their medical bills. Medicaid also is the primary payer for behavioral health services, it covers the cost of two-thirds of nursing home residents and 62 percent of the cost of home and community-based services for frail elders and people with disabilities, and covers nearly half of the births in the nation. The availability of these and other essential health and health-related services will be in serious jeopardy should the American Health Care Act (AHCA), currently pending in Congress, be enacted into law.
Senate leaders on Wednesday unveiled their legislation that would reshape America’s healthcare system by dramatically rolling back Medicaid. The bill largely mirrors the House AHCA measure that narrowly passed last month, but with some significant changes aimed at pleasing Senate moderates. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s bill, hashed out behind closed doors, basically retains Obamacare’s insurance subsidy structure – with a few tweaks – takes a gentler approach than the House legislation in the short-term to Medicaid expansion, and wouldn’t allow states to opt out of key protections for patients with preexisting conditions.
Still, the bill is not what the majority of Americans want or what Donald Trump promised us. Last week Trump called the House bill is “mean, mean, mean,” and called the AHCA – which would strip health insurance from 23 million Americans – a “SOB” (except he used the actual words that we as a faith-based organization will not).
Meanwhile in Virginia we have an eight-member joint House-Senate subcommittee studying healthcare. We want you to be in touch with Senators Hanger, Baker, Howell and Dunnavent and Delegates Landes, Jones, James and O’Bannon throughout the next few months, but especially now as the U.S. Congress is seeking to fundementally change our healthcare system … and not for the better.
Use the link below to send an email to all eight legislators on the subcomittee asking them to make their voices known before Congress wrecks our healthcare system.
