Issues: Health Care

BREAKING: Trump’s sabotage of the ACA will result in a Trump tax on health insurance

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah released the following statement after it was reported that Donald Trump will withhold the payment of Affordable Care Act cost-sharing reductions:

“Donald Trump is sabotaging insurance marketplaces across the country in the name of partisan politics and as a result, the country is going to pay the price in the form of higher premiums.  Trump is singlehandedly selling out millions of working Americans who count on these payments to afford insurance and when they’re faced with the consequences of this decision they’re going to know Donald Trump is the only one to blame.  Every Republican across the country should expect to be held accountable for this reckless decision that will hurt so many people.”

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Statement: Trumpcare Executive Order Undermines Americans’ Access to Healthcare and Risks Legal Challenges

American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah issued the following statement on Trump’s executive order further undermining the Affordable Care Act’s state insurance marketplaces as well as its protections for Americans with preexisting conditions: 

​”This is an outrageous, and potentially illegal, attack on Americans with preexisting conditions and the finances of middle class Americans. Trump’s actions will exacerbate the chaos in already-sabotaged marketplaces, force premiums to skyrocket, and open the doorway to large-scale health insurance fraud, all in the name of partisan politics. American families are paying attention, and they’ll know exactly who to blame when they’re hit with the consequences of Trump’s reckless behavior.”

​EXPERTS ON LEGALITY OF THE EXECUTIVE ORDER​

​American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Joseph Antos: “The E in ERISA is employee…They are going to have to stretch the definition of whether you’re an employee or not.” [Reuters, 10/12/2017]

Reuters: “U.S. President Donald Trump’s expected plan to let […]

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Trump’s Sabotage of the Affordable Care Act Costs the People of California

Donald Trump is actively sabotaging Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance marketplaces, and it is costing the people of California. Today, the Covered California announced that, as a result of Trump destabilizing the market, a new surcharge is being added for silver plans on the health insurance exchanges in California that will increase rates by an average of 12.4% next year.

This news comes after Donald Trump has taken a host of executive actions that have harmed insurance markets and driven-up healthcare costs for Americans, including an executive order on Trump’s first day in office to compromise the effectiveness of the individual mandate, calling into question whether the mandate would be enforced at all, pulling an initial round of ACA enrollment ads that had already been paid for, cutting the overall enrollment ad budget by 90% as well as community outreach funds by 40%, halving the enrollment period in most states, and ceasing Health and […]

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Experts: Trump Executive Order Could Complete Sabotage of ACA Marketplaces, Increasing Costs and Devastating Americans with Preexisting Conditions  

Healthcare experts are warning that the executive order Donald Trump will reportedly sign Thursday would catastrophically destabilize Affordable Care Act marketplaces, hammering Americans suffering from preexisting conditions and causing premiums to skyrocket.

This executive order will ruin the American healthcare system,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “It will devastate millions of Americans who suffer from preexisting conditions and drive healthcare costs up only because Donald Trump has chosen to put his cynical political agenda ahead of the country’s medical and financial well-being. This is a tragedy in the making for countless families, and they will hold Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress accountable for it.”

Trump and his administration have taken a large series of executive actions that have damaged Affordable Care Act insurance markets and that will raise healthcare costs for millions of Americans, including cutting the overall enrollment ad budget by 90% as well as community outreach funds by 40%, halving the enrollment period in most […]

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Unconstitutional 20 Week Abortion Ban Comes To The Senate

Emily Aden, Director of American Bridge’s Protect Women’s Health Careinitiative released the following statement in response to Senator Lindsey Graham’s introduction of legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks in the Senate:

“This bill punishes women, criminalizes doctors for doing their jobs, and is based on completely fake science. It’s a repugnant piece of legislation that would drag our country backwards and represents one of the greatest attacks on women’s rights in recent history. It must be stopped.”

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Anti-Choice Bill Reveals GOP’s Out of Touch Agenda

Emily Aden, Director of American Bridge’s Women’s Health Initiative, released the following statement on the House passing a 20 week abortion ban:

At a time when there are so many important national security and economic issues Congress should be focused on, Republicans are letting their obsession with passing laws limiting women’s control of their own reproductive health set the agenda.  Not only is that morally wrong, it is also at odds with the views of the majority of Americans.  A woman’s health decisions should lie with her and her doctor, not Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.

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American Bridge Launches Women’s Health Initiative

Today, American Bridge launched a new women’s health initiative, Protect Women’s Health Care, that combines a world-class opposition research operation, video tracking, and media monitoring to expose the Trump administration for what it is: a clear and present danger for women. Coinciding with the roll out of this new website, American Bridge kicked off a digital advertising campaign to promote select content on Facebook.

The new site can be viewed by clicking here:
http://protectwomenshealthcare.com/

“Every day under President Trump brings a new controversy or crisis, but we cannot lose sight of the danger he poses to women amidst all the other chaos,” said director of American Bridge’s women’s health initiative Emily Aden. “This initiative is designed to shut out the noise and hone in on all of the the big and small ways the Trump administration is rolling back decades of progress for women.”

This new website features explainer-style […]

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​​Trump’s sabotage of the Affordable Care Act costs the people of ​Maine

Donald Trump is actively sabotaging Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance marketplaces, and it is costing the people of Maine.
Today, ​Anthem announced that, as a result of Trump destabilizing the market, it will withdraw from offering individual coverage plans on the health insurance exchanges in ​Maine.

This news comes after Donald Trump has taken a host of executive actions that have harmed insurance markets and driven-up healthcare costs for Americans, including an executive order on Trump’s first day in office to compromise the effectiveness of the individual mandate, calling into question whether the mandate would be enforced at all, pulling an initial round of ACA enrollment ads that had already been paid for, and cutting the overall enrollment ad budget by 90% as well as community outreach funds by 40%.

Most damaging of all, Trump has repeatedly threatened to withhold cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which are critical in order for 7 million working people to […]

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CBO Report: Preliminary Analysis of Legislation That Would Replace Subsidies for Health Care With Block Grants

“This nonpartisan analysis confirms what we already knew: this bill would be a disaster for millions of Americans,” said American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates. “Mitch McConnell should scrap his plans to move forward immediately and work in a bipartisan fashion to fix existing law – nothing else is acceptable.”

Key paragraphs from the CBO:

The number of people with comprehensive health insurance that covers high-cost medical events would be reduced by millions compared with the baseline projections for each year during the decade, CBO and JCT estimate.

[…]

CBO and JCT expect that, if this legislation was enacted, millions of additional people would be uninsured compared with CBO’s baseline projections each year over the 2018–2026 period. (Adopting a well-established definition, the agencies categorize people as uninsured if they are not covered by a policy or enrolled in a government program that provides financial protection from major medical risks.) That increase would stem mainly from lower enrollment […]

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Senator Johnson offers an out that Senators Johnson, Graham, Cassidy, and Heller should take right away

American Bridge spokesperson Andrew Bates released the following statement after Sen. Ron Johnson outlined exactly why regular order should be chosen over the current frantic, reckless approach to passing a health care bill that America’s doctors, hospitals, and countless other nonpartisan medical experts are warning would ​cost millions of Americans their healthcare and slam Americans with preexisting conditions:

“Senator Johnson’s blueprint for what should happen if this Trumpcare bill fails is precisely what Senate Republicans should have done ​years ago – and it’s not too late to prevent ​a train-​w​reck of their own making​.  If Senate Republicans actually held hearings and worked in a bipartisan fashion​,​ they would  ​learn a great deal from the overwhelming majority of Americans who want them to improv​e​ the Affordable Care Act and abandon ​Trumpcare. They ought to take that approach instead of forcing this bill upon the country despite objections from countless experts and healthcare officials.”

VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT:

JONATHAN SCOTT: What […]

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