The N.C. Republican Death Panel: Members Who Voted for TrumpCare

In Elizabeth Warren’s words, “TrumpCare isn’t a health care bill. A bill that destroys health care for millions to shovel cash to the rich isn’t a health care bill. …It still strips coverage from millions. Still guts Medicaid. …TrumpCare will devastate Americans’ healthcare. Families will go bankrupt. People will die. Disease, sickness, and old age touch every family. Tragedy doesn’t ask who you voted for. Health care is a basic human right.”  Even so, Ryan’s TrumpCare bill passed the House last Thursday 217-213.

I don’t think anyone expected the members from North Carolina to stand up for regular working families and oppose TrumpCare on May 4th and they did not disappoint.  Only one of the ten Republicans from North Carolina voted no…so, kudos to Rep. Jones (NC-3).  His co-workers, on the other hand, were all too happy to vote your healthcare away.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (NC-5) said, “We are on a rescue mission, and this vote is an important step in repealing a failed law and delivering free-market, patient-centered solutions.” Mark Meadows (NC-11) added, “From the earliest stages of the discussion, I’ve stated that my goals were to 1) bring down premiums for Americans, and 2) protect those with pre-existing conditions.”  Mark, did you even read the bill before you voted or did you all pull a “Chris Collins”?  (Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted last Thursday that he did not read the full health care bill before voting for it.)

When the Affordable Care Act was under debate, and even after its passage, one of the biggest false, deluding statements Republicans used to demagogue against it was that it would create “death panels.”

Republicans who used the term never specified exactly what they meant by that term, but the implication was that one or more groups of cold-hearted, evil people would be supposedly making decisions on whether people should get certain kinds of health care or whether they should just be allowed to die. That was what unscrupulous demagogues like Sarah Palin and her ilk were talking about with their bogus claims that Obamacare included “death panels.”

However, now that the Republican Party is in complete control of our federal government, and these power-hungry politicians are anxious to start giving massive amounts of money and power to the elite special interests that enabled them to purchase their political offices.

The phrase “death panel” certainly seems accurate to me to describe that nasty, disgusting and evil group of people like Paul Ryan and his co-conspirators from North Carolina who voted to take health care coverage from Americans.

As CNBC put it, hours before the vote, “The Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare does not allocate nearly enough money to protect people with pre-existing health conditions from potentially higher insurance premiums, an analysis finds. The bill’s $23 billion in funding specifically for such people would cover just 110,000 Americans, or 5% of the current 2.2 million enrollees with some type of pre-existing conditions, according to the Avalere Health study released Thursday (May 4th).”

This was an immoral and fiscally irresponsible attempt to undo the gains made in improving 24 million citizens’ access to health care.  Under the Affordable Care Act we saw benefits such as the reduction of the needless crushing debt many households face when confronted with a simple medical procedure.

Instead of supporting the AHCA which increases insurance premiums, limits coverage and kicks people into high risk pools, they could have stood with other members of the House and Senate who were ready to adopt simple improvements to the existing law.  Small changes to the ACA would have been a welcome step over the repeal and replace of last week.

Lets begin the mantra now. Paul Ryan’s hellcare bill is nothing less than a Death Panel. Repeat after me: Death Panel. Death Panel. Death Panel.

The Republicans’ proposal is far closer to a death panel than anything Democrats have ever proposed or enacted, that’s for sure.

It is now our time to ‘repeal and replace’ those who voted for Trump Care.

Candidates that are running against North Carolina’s notorious nine (so far) are:

Jenny Marshall – 5th District www.marshallforhouse.org

Matt Coffay – 11th District mattcoffay.com

Maria Collins Warren – 9th District  www.mcw4congress.com

Christian Cano – 9th District  canoforcongress.com

Source: www.dailykos.com