Advocates decried details of the U.S. Senate's HR 1628, a.k.a., the Better Health Care Reconciliation Act, after logistics of the plan were finally released on June 22.
The intricacies of the plan—the Senate's answer to the House's Affordable Health Care Act ( AHCA )—were crafted in secrecy. The Congressional Budget Office has not yet had a chance to weigh in on the logistics of the legislation, but advocates said that the results of HR 1628 will be the same as AHCA: Millions of Americans will lose insurance coverage while the richest Americans will enjoy a substantial tax cut. Both pieces of legislation, which would have to be reconciled with one another if HR 1628 passes the Senate, scale back the Medicaid expansion that was integral to the Affordable Care Act ( ACA ).
"This bill, negotiated by thirteen men behind closed doors, represents more of the same from Republicans in Congress. Senate Republicans are willing to deny healthcare to millions of Americans, targeting children and the elderly with almost surgical precision, simply to give the top 1% a generous tax cut. To quote President Trump, this bill can be summed up with one word: 'mean,'" said Clare Duggan of the Indivisible Chicago coalition, which held a rally downtown at Federal Plaza Thursday afternoon.
"The Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress need to stop playing politics with the lives and wellbeing of people," noted Rea Carey, executive director, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund. "Repealing the Affordable Care Act will lead to devastating and irreparable consequences, including increased mortality rates, skyrocketing healthcare premiums, overcrowded emergency rooms, and limited insurance options. Callously denying access to affordable healthcare further underscores the Trump administration's malice toward the nation's most vulnerable, including the 1.8 million LGBTQ people who rely on Medicaid, the over 1 million LGBTQ older adults living with disabilities, and the 1.1 million people living with HIV."
"If the Trump-McConnell health care bill becomes law, it will threaten the lives of countless Americans," said HRC President Chad Griffin. "For LGBTQ people, who already face health care disparities, this proposal is downright dangerous. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill gut core provisions of the Affordable Care Act and cut off tens of millions of Americans from life-saving health care coverage while increasing out-of-pocket costs. This unconscionable proposal—drafted behind closed doors, without public input—is a disturbingly harmful bill that Senators must reject."
Scott Schoettes, Lambda Legal's HIV project director said during a June 22 Facebook Live presentation that the Senate plan was "just as bad, if not worse," than the House plan for people living with HIV, noting that the Senate plan allowed for the the rolling-back—and long-term elimination—of essential benefits.
"There can be no floor to health care plans," he explained. "They can be pretty sub-par, and if you have a chronic manageable condition like HIV, you're going to have a lot of trouble when the insurance companies pull the legs out from those benefits."
Schoettes noted that scaling back Medicaid would also have a devastating impact on persons with HIV/AIDS; some 40 percent of such individuals receive Medicaid benefits.
Schoettes and five colleagues recently resigned from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, citing the Trump administration's ostensible indifference to the epidemic. During his June 22 talk, he said that the ACHA's passage, which was enthusiastically celebrated by President Trump, as being "the straw that broke the camel's back" for him and his colleagues.
