Fraudulent Budget Plan Would Eliminate Medicare, Medicaid to Fund
Tax Cuts for Millionaires and Billionaires – Without Even Reducing Deficit

Washington, D.C. – Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the Republican budget proposal that would abolish Medicare and Medicaid:

“The Republicans have passed a 2012 budget proposal that is completely fraudulent, and everyone knows it. They call it the ‘Path to Prosperity,’ but it’s actually a path to poverty for America's seniors and the middle class. It's not a deficit-reduction plan, it's an assault on working families that lets the deficit stand while giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the super-rich by saddling seniors and middle-class families with thousands of dollars in new out-of-pocket costs.

“The GOP scheme to convert Medicaid funding into block grants is nothing more than a massive cost shift to the states that will force deep cuts that hurt seniors, children, people with disabilities and the working poor.

“No matter how much Speaker Boehner tries to spin the Republican plan to privatize Medicare as something else, it will eliminate guaranteed benefits people count on and shift huge out-of-pocket costs to seniors. The Republican plan will put nearly 60 million seniors at the mercy of private health insurance companies while handing over billions of dollars to the industry. While the Republicans have been obsessively focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act, attacking women's health care and making life sweeter for billionaires and millionaires, we’re 100 days into this session of Congress and they haven't done a single thing to create a single job.

“Their blueprint is not even a legitimate deficit reduction plan. Republicans acknowledge that their plan wouldn’t even balance the budget for another 30 years. Today's Republican vote is political theater when what this country needs is serious, responsible leadership.”

Read HCAN’s April 14 letter to Members of the House

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Health Care for America Now is a national grassroots coalition of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people. HCAN led the fight over the past two years to win passage of health reform and to keep Congress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.