Take Action for Healthcare TODAY! Call your Republican House Representative

UPDATE, 5/8/17: The AHCA passed in the House on 5/4/17 and is on to the Senate. Please contact your House Rep and consider the other action ideas in our recent blogpost.

UPDATE, 5/2/17: The healthcare vigils mentioned below have passed, but unfortunately, House Republicans are still trying to whip up votes for the ACA repeal, which may come up for a vote POSSIBLY AS SOON AS TOMORROW (WEDNESDAY)! Please call your House rep again today!

House lawmakers are apparently getting closer to reintroducing a bill to repeal the ACA, possibly even this week! Vigils are scheduled today outside of the offices of New Jersey’s Republican House Representatives. Call your House Representative TODAY and tell them to protect affordable healthcare!

Not sure who your House representative is? Find out here.

Several Republican members of Congress signaled yesterday that a revised AHCA bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act may soon be brought to the floor for a vote. Freedom Caucus Republicans are apparently meeting Wednesday evening to discuss support for a new bill. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has not been able to run a cost-benefit analysis of the bill!

If you have a Republican House Representative it is ESSENTIAL to call them today and demand they oppose any bill that would lead to the loss of insurance coverage for any American or to increased premium costs for the ill and the elderly!

Why? Because the revised bill will:

• end the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid
• repeal the taxes that enable the Affordable Care Act to function
• give insurers the option to make the premiums for older adults up to 5 times higher than the premiums for younger people
• allow insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions more in states that apply for a waiver of federal mandates
• allow insurers to eliminate essential health benefits like chemotherapy in states that apply for a waiver of federal mandates
• allow insurers to eliminate benefits like maternity and mental health care from their plans in states that apply for a waiver of the required minimum package of benefits under the Affordable Care Act

As if all that’s not enough, it appears that these threats to healthcare would not apply to the health coverage that politicians receive — members of Congress and their staff would be protected from these changes and able to keep the popular benefits of the ACA, while the rest of us stand to lose them!

Advocacy groups such as AARP are urging the public to contact their House representative to say NO to this revised repeal-and-replace bill. New Jersey Citizen Action is holding vigils today from 4:30-6:30pm in front of the local offices of New Jersey’s Republican members of Congress. If you can, please attend! And whether you can attend a vigil or not, call your Republican member of Congress to say that you stand in solidarity with constituents at these vigils and that you oppose this repeal-and-replace bill!

And while you’re at it, tell your representative to support HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which would provide comprehensive health care to all residents of the United States!

LEARN MORE

• about the revisions to the repeal-and-replace bill
• about HR 676