Blog

Protect Our Care coalition reacts to defeat of Obamacare replacement plan

After a much-maligned and, according to opinion polls, widely unpopular proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was pulled from consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives Friday, the Protect Our Care Illinois Coalition issued the following statement:

CHICAGO – Today’s decision by Republican leadership in U.S. House of Representatives to withdraw a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) can be attributed in large part to the valiant opposition that health care consumers, workers, and advocates have mounted against a bill that would have stripped an estimated 24 million Americans of their health insurance, while inflating costs for millions more who remained covered.

It is clear that the campaign to preserve affordable health care for all Americans is strong and impactful. Protect Our Care Illinois thanks every Member of Congress who was prepared to vote this horrendous bill down. As heartened as we are by today’s results, we remain deeply dismayed that so many House members still were prepared to vote for the American Health Care Act, despite the havoc it would have unleashed – and in defiance of public opinion polls that showed sweeping majorities of voters staunchly opposed to the measure.

Indeed, a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday – before the latest revision of the bill had gutted the popular Essential Health Benefits protections included in Obamacare – showed that the ACHA failed to capture support from even a majority of Republican voters.

Here is in Illinois, we urge our Republican lawmakers to consult with their party leaders in Washington to urge them to focus on strengthening the protections in Obamacare that allowed tens of millions of Americans to obtain health insurance and guaranteed coverage for preexisting conditions and essential needs, such a doctor’s visits, lab tests, and maternity care.  These are all legacies of Obamacare that Americans support and the Republican replacement plan would have unraveled.

“Providers, patients, and concerned citizens across the country can breathe a sigh of relief as this ill-conceived bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been defeated,” said John Bouman, President of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and Protect Our Care Illinois leader. “We hope that leaders in Congress will now abandon their crusade to undermine the ACA and turn their attention to building upon its progress towards a just and humane health care system that cares for all.”

The next moves to expect from opponents of the ACA are unclear at this moment, but regardless, the Protect Our Care Illinois coalition will be ready to defend the six million Illinoisans with pre-existing conditions and the three million Illinoisans with Medicaid coverage who are currently benefiting from the ACA. Health coverage is a matter of life and death in many cases, and efforts to strip coverage from our neighbors must be called out for what they are and defeated.

Protect Our Care Illinois is a statewide coalition of health care advocates, providers, consumers, and workers, working to prevent the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), prevent disastrous changes to Medicaid, and protect and expand access to quality affordable health care.