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The new Republican House majority was just sworn in yesterday—but we don’t have to wait to find out whose side they’re on. They’re showing us from Day One that it’s politics as usual—they’re on the side of the insurance companies and other big businesses that spent gobs of money to elect them.
Instead of helping put America back to work, instead of helping rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and instead of fixing our foreclosure mess, the new House Republican majority wants to undo all the progress we’ve made over the past two years, starting with a vote next week to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Repealing health care reform would strip away the crackdowns we’ve fought so hard for on insurance company abuse. It would lead to the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people a year because they wouldn’t be able to get affordable insurance. It would add $10 billion a year to the deficit. And it’s also a waste of precious time—a cheap shot to score political points.
But the new Republican majority in the House is more interested in playing political football with our health than in protecting children, seniors and middle-class Americans.
We can’t go backward. We can’t go back to letting insurance companies refuse coverage to sick children, limit our medical care or bring back lifetime and annual caps on benefits that drive more families into bankruptcy. To start fighting back, we’re collecting stories about how the Affordable Care Act is helping real people, right now.
Many parts of the new Affordable Care Act are already in effect and helping tens of millions of U.S. families get quality health care.
Tell us your story about how health care reform has helped you, your family or people you know.
Then read and comment on other stories and tell your friends.
In solidarity,
Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO
P.S. You might be benefiting from the Affordable Care Act right now and not even know it. Here are some of the ways health care reform is already helping millions:
- Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions and young people can stay on their parents’ policies until age 26. Have your kids—or the kids of someone you know—been helped? Let us know.
- Insurance companies can’t drop people from coverage when they become sick or put a lifetime cap on benefits. Have you or someone in your family with a serious illness benefited? If so, let us know.
- Insurance companies must cover preventive care such as mammograms, annual physicals and cancer screenings without deductibles or co-pays. Has this preventive care rule helped you?
- For Medicare recipients, the new law already has provided a $250 prescription drug rebate. This year, it will lower drug costs even more and eventually close the donut hole (the gap in coverage when seniors must pay full price for their needed medications.) If the Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act, seniors would have to pay the government back and would get no further benefits. Has this benefit helped you pay for needed prescriptions? Do you need the donut hole closed so you don’t have to choose between food and medicine?
Be a Seed for Change 
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