CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Plan, has broad bipartisan support but is still being held in limbo as a political bargaining chip.

This leaves families all over the 8th District and all over this country uncertain about when their healthcare coverage may run out.

Patients and their families are anxious, especially those families with children who have chronic diseases.

The millions of families that rely on CHIP can’t wait any longer. Add your name to mine right now to call on Congress to reinstate CHIP immediately.

One of those victims is my patient Megan, who gives herself insulin shots and checks her blood sugar six times per day just like I did as a teen with type 1 diabetes. Without CHIP, her parents will need to pay $380 per month on supplies and insulin. They work hard for a living, but that type of extra expense is not affordable.

Medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country. The failure to fund CHIP puts more working families at risk. This is unacceptable.

CHIP passed with strong bipartisan support and should not be subject to political gamesmanship. The problem is that the Republicans want to fund CHIP, a $15 billion program, by pulling funds away from existing public health and medical care programs. That just doesn’t make sense at a time when they’ve just passed a tax bill with a gigantic $1.5 trillion “welfare check” to the wealthy and corporations.

Working families need help, not the 1%. It is time to fund CHIP.

Friends,

New year, new horrifying anti-environment policy: Donald Trump just announced that his administration will allow offshore drilling in huge swaths of previously protected areas – including more than 1 billion acres in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans that have been off limits for decades.

This decision is a gift-wrapped handout to the fossil fuel industry, but it comes at the expense of basically everyone and everything else: coastal residents, the fishing industry and anyone else whose livelihood relies on healthy oceans and strong coastal communities, particularly in states like Rhode Island.

Working families all over the country will pay the price, but Donald Trump doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if fish stocks are decimated. He doesn’t care if pollution from oil rigs renders the beaches that so many communities rely on unusable. That’s why we have to speak out. That’s why I’m saying, “Not on my watch.”

Add your name now to tell Donald Trump: No new offshore drilling!

Thanks,

Sheldon