Gallego, Kirkpatrick call for 'Health Care Congress' to fight for ACA
The partisan battle over health care continued Tuesday as the liberal group "Protect Our Care Arizona" demanded that Congress keep fighting for the Affordable Care Act amid ongoing attacks by President Donald Trump's administration.
Joined by Reps. Ruben Gallego and Ann Kirkpatrick, the Democratic coalition known for defending former President Barack Obama's signature health-care-reform law — which critics on the right dubbed "Obamacare" — called for the new 116th Congress to right the wrongs they say Republicans have done in the health-care realm.
"We have seen the results of trying to play politics with people's health care," Gallego said. "American families shouldn't have to make tough choices about whether to pay for costly medical care or for their groceries, electric bills, and other household expenses."
This comments, made in a media conference call, came a month and a half after a federal judge in Texas sided with conservatives in a lawsuit aiming to strike down the Affordable Care Act, which Congress passed and Obama signed into law in 2010.
The judge said in his December 2018 ruling that the ACA mandate requiring health insurance "can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress's Tax Power," and is therefore unconstitutional. He also said the mandate was an essential part of the ACA, so that meant the whole law should be struck down.
The ruling even acknowledged that health care has become "a politically charged affair" — one that Gallego believes is largely responsible for last year's Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives.
"Voters sent a clear message in November: they want an end to the Republican war on health care," Gallego said. "Forty-four members of Congress who voted to repeal the ACA and set back our progress on health care lost their seats."
Alicia Held, a Tucson resident, presented her family as financial casualties of the health-care battle.
Held is successful with a master's degree in her field, but her family sits barely above the poverty line due to health-care costs.
Held said when she was in college, young adults were not allowed to stay on their parents' health insurance. When she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her junior year, she said, her parents had to spend their entire retirement fund to front the $50,000 out-of-pocket cost of brain surgery.
Due to health complications, Held had to have her pituitary and adrenal glands removed and she now relies solely on medications to keep her alive. She has Medicare but starting in March she will have to pay around $3,000 a month out of pocket for her medication.
"Some months I may stop taking medicines that maybe don't keep me alive but may keep my heart beating regularly or that keeps the severe migraines I have away," Held said. "Or, maybe, we'll not pay the electric bill or the water bill one month so that we can pay for the medications that keep me alive."
Kirkpatrick, who represents Held, said stories like hers keep her fighting for affordable health care.
"We need to end the Republican sabotage on health care," Kirkpatrick said. "And my Republican colleagues, as much as I like them, need to be held accountable for their actions and understand what impact that would have on real families and real people."
Protect Our Care argues that voters sent a message in 2018 that "they want an end to the Republican war on health care and pre-existing conditions" when they voted dozens of Republicans out of office, replacing many of them with more progressive Democrats. The Democrats took control of the House, but Republicans still control the Senate.
Protect Our Care called on the 116th Congress to be the "Health Care Congress" and take action to reverse some of the health-care-related decisions the Trump administration has made over the past two years, including the cuts to funding for open enrollment advertisements and extensions for short-term health plans that the group claims gives insurance companies the ability to take advantage of their customers with insufficient plans.
The group said it hopes to raise awareness of the negative effects the Texas decision could have if not overturned. Those include women being forced to pay higher premiums than men, senior citizens paying more for prescriptions and 19-to-25-year-olds losing the ability to stay on their parents' health insurance.
Gallego said he is focused on expanding health-care access in Arizona and across the country, and he hopes other members of Congress will follow suit.
"The American people want health care that works better for them and costs them less," he said. "It's time to make that happen."
Source: Alexis Egeland, Arizona Republic