Public pressure grows against Health Care repeal

Concerned citizens from across Wisconsin turned out in droves over Martin Luther King Day weekend to protest the dangerous repeal of the Affordable Care Act which began in Congress.

The events were part of a national day of action which inspired dozens of rallies across the country. In Wisconsin Citizen Action of Wisconsin led major rallies in Appleton, Milwaukee, Wausau, Waukesha, and Eau Claire. Turnout was large in all the rallies.

At the event in Milwaukee, headlined by U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and Congresswoman Gwen Moore, so many people tried to jam into the venue that for safety reasons a second simultaneous rally had to be held outside on the street.

Public pressure is building against the rash course President Trump and Congressional Republicans are taking on the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare. Urban Institute research shows that that repealing the Affordable Care Act without a viable replacement will rip health care coverage away from 30 million Americans and 430,000 Wisconsinites, while dramatically raising costs. In addition to this immediate impact, Americans will no longer have someplace go to no matter what to get affordable coverage when they leave jobs that include health care benefits.

In response to the rallies Donald Trump asserted over the weekend that an ACA replacement will cover everyone, but Republicans are proceeding at breakneck speed without offering any credible alternative. Even if the right-wing conservatives that dominate Congress and the White House somehow come up with an alternative health care plan, something they have failed to develop since the debate over ACA began in 2009, they are already taking votes which take away the money to fund it.

“Donald Trump and the Congressional Republicans campaigned on lowering health care costs and increasing choice, but in one of the greatest bait and switches in American history they are now on a dangerous and deadly course that would strip coverage from 30 million people and lead to the unwinding of Medicare and Medicaid,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “Their scheme is to lie about what they are actually doing to the American people, executing their fraud in the dark of night, through arcane procedural votes. The public protest movement that began this weekend is a lethal threat to their maneuver, which depends on the American people not knowing what they do.”

Coalition partners who participated in the weekend events included Wisconsin Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals, SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, Grassroots Waukesha, Physicians for a National Health Plan, and Outagamie County Democrats.