I was one of the speakers at our Chain-Chain-Chain event Sunday. Here is what I said.
The health care situation in this Congressional District is horrible! It is so bad that last week the PBS News Hour featured our area to show how terrible it is that Virginia did not expand Medicaid to cover more people under the Affordable Care Act.
People in many places in Virginia are in dire need of medical care services, but none more than our neighbors in Southwest Virginia. That is why Remote Area Medical (RAM) sets up a temporary free clinic in Wise, Virginia, for one weekend each year.
In the 1980s, adventurer Stan Brock established mobile RAM clinics to deliver basic medical aid to people in some of the world’s remote regions. Later, he realized that such care was needed in parts of the United States, so he set up RAM clinics in this country, bringing free volunteer medical, dental, and vision care to some of the neediest people in various regions one weekend a year.
Thousands of men and women come seeking care annually, some camping out all night to get places in line to improve their chances of getting one of the limited entries into the temporary free medical facility. For some people, this is the only opportunity they have all year to see a doctor.
Morgan Griffith and his Republican colleagues in Congress are making it worse with their health care bills. Instead of adding people, their plan would cut over 20 million more people from Medicaid. Please note that this is in addition to the individuals and families who do not have insurance today. They will increase the number of people in the country without health insurance to over 40 million.
In essence, they are attempting to become a real death panel—dooming some people to death. Remember back in 2009 we had a lot of false talk about the affordable care act creating death panels. Well, the Republican plan will increase the number of people who will die due to the lack of health insurance, thus creating death panel victims. With over 40 million people without health insurance, we can expect over 25,000 to die each year because they lack insurance.
The Republicans death panel bill will cause over 62,000 of our neighbors in the 9th Congressional District to lose health insurance, and the result will be hundreds of these people dying each year.
It is important that we continue to play defense. Let’s continue to resist these horrible laws by the Republicans. However, let us begin to play offense as well. Let us push for health care as a right. That would mean we would push for health care for everyone. Let’s push to cover everyone. If we push to cover everyone , we will push for something like Medicare-for-all.
We are the only industrialized country in the western world that does not provide health care for everyone.
One other significant note: a universal health care plan, a Medicare-for-all plan, or a single payer plan—whatever you may call it–would cost less than the Affordable Care Act.
AND It would cost less than the system we had before the Affordable Care Act. So, let us push to join the rest of the world and provide health care to all of our citizens.