Health Care For America Now

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 358, a dangerous anti-women's health bill that undermines access to care.  It is no surprise that House Republicans would rather play politics with women's health than focus on jobs and the economy.

Call your Member of Congress today toll free - (877) 264-HCAN (4226) and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 358.

Here is the letter HCAN signed along with over 50 other organizations vehemently opposing this bill.

Below are some important facts from National Women's Law Center on this issue. You can download the full fact sheet here.

H.R. 358, authored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA), threatens women's ability to purchase health insurance that includes abortion coverage and creates dangerous new rules that will harm women's health-and even risk women's lives.

• H.R. 358 would virtually prohibit health plans in the new health insurance exchanges from covering abortion services, even though most health insurance covers it today.
• The bill exempts hospitals from treating women in need of emergency abortion care, even if they will die without it.
• H.R. 358 allows states to exempt health insurance plans from complying with any obligation under the new health law if it offends the insurer's "conscience." For example, an insurer could refuse to cover contraception, the HPV vaccine or any other service.

Here are some messages and talking points from Planned Parenthood on H.R. 358:

• This legislation represents yet another attempt by some Republican leaders to force consideration of policies that would drastically erode women's health and reduce access to basic health care services and information.
• This bill would take comprehensive health coverage away from women, eliminate existing legal protections for women who need an abortion to save their lives, expand current refusal laws that undermine women's health, and create loopholes that states and insurance companies could exploit to undermine the requirement that insurance companies provide birth control with no co-pays.
• Most devastating, the bill eliminates protections for patients seeking care in emergency circumstances and would allow a hospital to deny lifesaving abortion care to a woman, even if a doctor deems it necessary.
• Any politician who votes for this bill is literally putting politics before women's health.
• This is the latest example that Republican leaders prioritize putting politics before women's health, and just can't keep their eyes on the ball when it comes to jobs and the economy.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

America's families and small businesses are barely hanging on while the Wall Street-run health insurance profit machines have been jacking up rates and providing less care. That's why it makes sense for Occupy Wall Street protesters to occupy them as well.

In an excellent post on Monday, former health insurance industry insider Wendell Potter suggested that protesters target the Washington, D.C., offices of the insurance industry's lobbying arm. He's right. People should also demonstrate at the corporate offices of the biggest Wall Street-run companies: Aetna and Cigna in Hartford, Conn., WellPoint in Indianapolis, Humana in Louisville and UnitedHealth in Minneapolis.

Much has been said about the banks and credit card companies that are headquartered on Wall Street. The health insurance companies' relentless pursuit of profit and callous disregard for people offers another window into how big corporations have abused people and twisted the economy to serve their own interests.

Health insurance companies make excessive profits, hoard massive amounts of cash, overcharge their customers and give their top executives obscene paychecks.

While we've been dealing with the crushing impact of the worst recession since the Great Depression, the top five health insurance companies have been celebrating boom years thanks to record profits that are expected to total $14 billion in 2011, an astonishing 80% increase since 2008. They did it by raising rates 131% since 1999.

After the insurers gouge us and line their CEOs' pockets, they hoard billions of dollars. As of Dec. 31, 2010, the nation's for-profit and nonprofit health insurance companies were holding $97.3 billion to cover unexpected medical claims - six times more than state regulators require, according to Citigroup Global Markets.

Not surprisingly, insurance company CEOs and executives have been compensated at obscene levels for producing such enormous profits for Wall Street. The chief executives of America's 10 largest health insurance companies were paid $228 million in 2009, up from $33 million in 2000. In that 10-year period, health insurance CEOs received nearly $1 billion in total compensation, and that doesn't even count hundreds of millions more in unreported exercises of stock options during that period. We've got 9% unemployment, falling wages and a declining standard of living, and these guys are taking raises that stagger the imagination.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are uninsured, and millions more have inadequate coverage. The Affordable Care Act is changing things for the better, but full implementation can't come soon enough. That's why so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters say health care is a major issue for them. Many don't have insurance, and they're worried they never will. And while Wall Street and the big corporations are wreaking havoc on the country, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to make things worse by trying to repeal consumer-friendly reforms like the health care law and bank regulation and trying to eliminate middle-class programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

At the core of the hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protests across the country is anger over the simple fact that the wealthiest 1% and the corporations they own are getting even richer while the rest of us - the 99% who built this country and make it work - are getting poorer. Our perverse economy has produced such extreme income inequality that it is destroying the very essence of America.

The right-wing Republican extremists who work for the 1% like the Koch Brothers think it's the protesters who are destroying America. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor calls the protestors "growing mobs." GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who is not burdened by Cantor's restraint, calls the Wall Street demonstrators "un-American."

Some in the media complain that they can't figure out what the protesters want. It seems pretty obvious to me. They want jobs and health care and homes. They want an end to unbridled corporate greed. They want the opportunity to realize their full potential in the greatest country on earth. And they want their political leaders to stand up for them, not the 1%. That's why they started this movement on Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, and that's why the politicians should support the protesters instead of calling them names.

Here are two things you can do to support the movement against corporate greed:

• To find an Occupy event near you, go to the website Occupy Together.
  
• Join The Other 98 Percent and Health Care for America Now in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4 to protest a fancy gala dinner being held by a Koch Brothers front group. The "American Dream Guerrilla Drive-In" counter-event starts at 8 p.m.

Today HCAN released a statement on Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg's latest plan to devastate middle-class families.

Below is a great piece on this issue by Rick Unger for Mother Jones:

GOP Congressman Equates Purchasing Health Insurance To Buying An Expensive Vacation Home

-By Rick Ungar | Thu Oct. 6, 2011 10:22 AM PDT

Just when you thought it could not get more ridiculous, GOP Congressman and Chairman of the House Appropriations Labor-Health and Human Services subcommittee, Denny Rehberg, has come up with a novel idea. He wants the Congressional super committee to solve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by simply killing off the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies that will open the door to health care for millions of Americans.

In making his argument, Rehberg noted that expanding the Medicaid safety net program, and providing subsidies to low and middle class workers, is akin to the "expensive vacation home" that the average American would choose not to buy if that American was facing a deficit as serious as the nation's.

Before getting to the heart of Rehberg's suggestion, one can't help but wonder what makes the Congressman think that the "average" American can afford an expensive vacation home (or any vacation home for that matter) on what the average American earns, even if that American is not in debt?

But should we be surprised by the Congressman's view of the world? This is the same Denny Rehberg who is not only listed as number 23 on the list of the wealthiest members of Congress, but is the same Congressman Rehberg who had no idea what the minimum wage was in his own state (check out this video as it is priceless.)

Of course, far more important is Rehberg's inability to grasp that getting treatment for cancer or unblocking that clogged artery that is going to make someone a widow or widower is not quite the same as purchasing a vacation home-expensive or otherwise.

And while life might not be worth living for Rep. Rehberg and friends without that idyllic home on the lake, the average American would still prefer to remain alive, thank you very much, which is precisely why Medicaid coverage was extended to more people and subsidies are to be made available to the working poor and middle-class so that medical care would become an option in their lives.

When asked how low and middle class Americans will manage to purchase health care, should the mandate requiring them to do so be found to be Constitutional by SCOTUS, Rehberg answered that Health and Human Services would be able to grant waivers to those who cannot afford coverage without Medicaid or subsidies.

Thus, Rehberg's solution is to simply leave millions of Americans without coverage by way of a waiver. Nice.

Health Care For America Now's Executive Director, Ethan Rome, put it this way:

Rep. Rehberg's proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying 'an expensive vacation home.'

Considering that estimates place the uninsured under age 65 in Montana at somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of the population, a number well in excess of the national average, I suspect that Rehberg's fellow Montana might disagree with his approach.

Let's hope they voice that disagreement at the ballot box next November.

For Immediate Release - SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

Contact: Avram Goldstein 202-587-1634
agoldstein@healthcareforamericanow.org

Washington, DC - Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization, released the following statement from HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome on the Republican presidential candidate debate and today's first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act's Patient Bill of Rights:

"During a discussion of vaccines at the GOP presidential debate last night, Rick Perry said, ‘I will always err on the side of life, as a governor and as the President of the United States.' If only that were so. The Texas governor has for years demonstrated his lack of concern for life by not lifting a finger to reduce the skyrocketing population of uninsured Texans. One of every four Texas residents has no health insurance, forcing many of them to go without access to life-saving care. The state rate is an astonishing 62% higher then thenational rate, meaning Texans are far more likely to die prematurely or file for bankruptcy.

"Perry isn't the only one suffering from severe health care denial. The Republicans in last night's debate used extremist language to attack the Affordable Care Act at least 17 times. All of them would rather spout their ideological boilerplate than admit that the health care law has broken the insurance companies' death grip on our care.

"Here's the reality: Today marks one year since the health care law's Patient Bill of Rights took effect, enabling 1 million uninsured young adults to get health coverage. It has ended insurance company abuses like lifetime limits on health benefits and bans on excluding children with pre-existing conditions from coverage. This law hasgiven millions of seniors more affordable prescription drugs and free preventive care through Medicare. But the Republicans are holding fast to their anti-Obama talking points, so don't expect to hear those inconvenient truths from them."

-30-

Health Care for America Now is the nation's leading grassroots health care advocacy organization. HCAN led the fight over the past three years to win passage of health reform and to keepCongress from being steamrolled by corporate special interests.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

Just the other day in Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said, "The American dream was available to me because America was never set up as a class society." A classless society? It's too bad the Texas governor didn't alert the Republicans in Congress before they started mouthing off about how President Obama's tax proposals are "class warfare." Republican leaders were caught flat-footed on Monday, and the class-warfare talking point was the best they could do.

But this claim is nonsense. As the president said, "This is not class warfare, it's math." It's also the right thing to do. The country is in a jam, and everyone needs to pitch in. The president made a forceful argument that it's a matter of fairness to ask the wealthiest in America to do their part. Specifically, the president wants fewer than 450,000 of 144 million taxpayers to pay a bit more. That barely qualifies as shared sacrifice, let alone "warfare." And let's not forget that the wealthy did pretty well under the Bush tax cuts.

The fact is that even if the GOP wanted to do they right thing, nearly every Republican in Congress has signed Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection" pledge to oppose civilization and never raise any taxes in any way, ever - including closing corporate loopholes or asking the super-rich to pay a little more. Both of those things would actually help the middle-class taxpayers the Republicans pretend to protect.

Given the sweeping nature of Norquist's cult-like pledge, it effectively makes members of Congress who adhere to it less than full members because they've signed away their ability to use all the tools available to solve problems that involve money, and money-type problems come up a lot. The Republicans like to say that every problem is a spending problem. Well, when hedge-fund managers pay lower tax rates than families that can only dream about having enough money to invest in a hedge fund, that's a tax problem, not a spending one, and it's best fixed by changing the tax code.

Virtually every Republican utterance and action in the deficit debate has been reckless, irresponsible and totally driven by politics. Now that we're entering the official election season, it's naive to think Republicans would start governing now. But the pressure is on. The president has made serious proposals, and the GOP has to figure out how to go respond with a lot more than empty bumper-sticker lines like "class warfare." Slogans won't help much when the Super Committee gets down to business.

It's old news that the GOP functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of insurance companies, Wall Street banks and other big corporations. But these are new times. When the Republicans fight tooth and nail to keep three one-hundredths of one percent of taxpayers from paying their fair share, it's a stark reminder that they won't stand up for America's working and middle-class families no matter how bad people are hurting.

Many of the GOP's traditional allies in the business community know we need to take action now to get the economy moving with more resources and initiatives like the president's jobs plan. But the Republican Party's loyalty to inside-the-beltway extremists like Norquist exceeds even their commitment to serving their corporate patrons, and that's saying something.

The president isn't talking about class warfare. He's talking about economic firepower, and that's what America needs right now.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

While the Republican candidates for President made it clear in their debate this week that they are happy to let uninsured people die if they have a serious illness, the Republicans in Congress are plotting to make people with insurance pay even more for their coverage to boost insurance company profits. How? By stealing nearly $2 billion in rebates that insurance companies owe consumers and small businesses and giving the money back to the insurers.

At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, this would be an astonishing transfer of money from consumers to the already overflowing coffers of the health insurance industry, whose top five companies alone made $11.7 billion in 2010.

The heist is being promoted by the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. They want to repeal a provision of the Affordable Care Act, known as the medical-loss ratio (MLR). The MLR sets a minimum percentage of premiums (80 percent for individual and small-group plans and 85 percent for large group plans) that insurers spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated executive compensation. Under the law, companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the difference to consumers. The GOP thinks repealing this requirement is such as good idea in this weak economy that they're holding a hearing on it Thursday.

The rebates are huge because insurance companies overcharge so much. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that consumers will receive $1.4 billion in rebates in the coming year. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says the rebates could hit $2 billion.

Already the MLR rule is saving consumers money. Some insurance companies in California, Connecticut, Michigan and North Carolina have already rolled back rates, declared premium holidays or issued direct refunds. In Connecticut, policyholders saw rate decreases of as much as 19 percent. That's how the law is supposed to work - it forces insurance companies to change their pricing and makes them pay if they don't.

But the GOP cares more about the insurance companies than consumers and small businesses. You might even say the industry and other corporate interests and campaign contributors own the Republicans in Congress.

In fact, the health care and insurance industries have given the Republicans holding Thursday's hearing more than $21.7 million in campaign contributions, according to a new analysis by Public Campaign Action Fund. Maybe that's why they are willing to take so much money from consumers and give it to health insurers even as they rake in record profits on the backs of families and businesses being crushed by a bad economy.

We desperately need to help working and middle-class families, support small businesses and put America back to work. That's what our representatives in Congress should be doing, not robbing money from people trying to keep up with their bills.

Cross posted on the Huffington Post here.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

It would be easy to criticize Speaker John Boehner's reckless and irresponsible political theater, but yesterday's spectacle in Congress speaks for itself. Enough! Call Congress and demand a clean debt-ceiling increase now.

For good reason, raising the debt ceiling has always been a routine bipartisan act of Congress. It is dangerous and foolish to toy with default by linking debt-ceiling increase to any contentious legislative initiative. This is especially true of a budget debate that forces fundamental questions over whether our government should protect tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations or protect seniors and middle-class families, a debate further complicated because it exposes deep divisions within the House Republican caucus.

That's why a clean debt-ceiling bill is the best way to solve this crisis.

Speaker Boehner's effort today to get the votes for a debt package that is dead-on-arrival in the Senate is as pointless as it is dangerous. Boehner and the Republicans are bringing us one step closer to a crisis that will wreck our economy and disrupt the lives of America's families. Because of their extremism, seniors may not get their Social Security checks and our soldiers fighting overseas will have to worry about whether their families back home will get their pay.

Our nation's politics have historically been held together by core values about putting country above party, about working together for the common good, especially in times of crisis. The House Republicans are tossing those values out the window.

This has to stop.

We can't wait anymore — it's time for Congress to raise the debt ceiling immediately. You can click this link and tell Congress to act now.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

House Speaker John Boehner should be ashamed of his deceitful speech Monday night. He didn't tell the truth. After introducing himself as the speaker of "the whole House," Boehner spoke as a political partisan and not a practical problem solver.

Boehner is a hostage of the Tea Party fanatics in his caucus and the Republicans' obsession with protecting tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, like hedge fund managers, corporate jet owners, oil companies and other special interests.

Boehner's response to the president was an astonishing display of revisionist history and brutish partisan politics. Boehner described his plans in poll-tested generalities, but what he didn't tell the American people was that his proposal would cut $1.8 trillion from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, in order to protect millionaires, billionaires and big corporations from paying their fair share. It's almost cartoonishly diabolical. The GOP's approach would paralyze Washington by forcing Congress to revisit this issue again and again instead of creating the jobs our country needs.

Monday night, Boehner told one lie after another. Not half-truths or mischaracterizations. Lies. He saved the biggest lies for how he described the debt ceiling talks themselves. He said, "I made a sincere effort to work with the president," yet every time the deal gets closer to what the Republicans want they run away. He said, "The president would not take yes for an answer." That's what the president said about Boehner last week. The difference is, when the president said it, it was true and still is.

Boehner then said that the president "wants a blank check." That's absurd. How can anyone argue that a plan with trillions of dollars in spending cuts is a blank check? The cuts being discussed are historic. They're massive.

The simple fact is that the Republicans are not working with the president to avert a crisis, they're doing everything they can to create one. In contrast, President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have repeatedly made clear that they're willing to work with the Republicans to develop a sensible, long-term budget and avert an economic disaster that will reverberate around the world.

President Obama has always said we need a balanced plan that includes both spending cuts and revenue. It's only fair that everyone should pitch in, including millionaires, billionaires and the big corporations, and it's critical that we protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from budget cuts that would devastate America's seniors and middle-class families.

The Republicans now have to decide whether they want to govern or keep saying no to protect the wealthiest people and corporations in America. The GOP's extremist position against a balanced approach won't create a single job or help a single business keep its doors open. The Republicans' fanaticism and brinkmanship is out of control and puts at risk our economy and the financial security of all Americans.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

The extremist GOP has recklessly politicized one of the most important governing opportunities of a lifetime - Speaker of the House John Boehner walked away from bipartisan debt-ceiling talks at the last minute to protect tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations.

It was an astonishing display of crass, reckless partisan politics to appease the Speaker's base of Tea Party fanatics in Congress and his special-interest campaign contributors, which increasingly control him instead of his better instincts to do the right thing.

The debt-ceiling talks are about setting priorities and making hard choices. Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor and the Republicans have made their choices clear: In the negotiations they have chosen to put tax cuts for big corporations and super-rich people before all other considerations.

The Speaker and the GOP have put ideological purity and pandering to extremist right-wing interest groups and their Republican mouthpieces in Congress before problem solving to avert a crisis. Before deficit reduction. Before job creation. Before helping America's seniors and working and middle-class families get by in this tough economy.

It isn't any more complicated that. They've made their choices clear. And so, too, has the president.

By all accounts the parties were moments away from a deal that met the vast majority of the Republicans' demands while forcing Democrats to accept a disturbingly long list of concessions on core principles and priority programs they hold dear. And yet giving the Republicans a lot of what they wanted was not enough because the Republicans' dirty secret is that they don't really care about the deficit. And as the president has said, the Republicans simply don't know how to say yes. Instead, the GOP has engaged in political brinkmanship on steroids to protect tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and big corporations that need those tax breaks less than anyone.

When the Republicans walked away from an imminent bipartisan deal, they threw the economy, the international markets and seniors and middle-class families under the bus. They're willing to default on Americans' financial obligations and default on the American dream, which has bee made possible by programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, college aid and much more.

It's now abundantly clear that the Republicans are willing to drive our economy off a cliff rather than ask corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share. They're willing to end Medicare as we know it rather than ask corporate jet owners to give up their excessive and unjustifiable tax breaks. They're willing to slash Medicaid and literally kick millions of seniors out of nursing homes — and shift billions of dollars of costs to the states while costing millions of jobs — rather than force Big Oil companies to give up their special tax loopholes.

The GOP's recklessness and irresponsibility has no limits even at this perilous moment. Unfortunately, they're not in power to govern. They don't care about getting things done for the best interest of the country. They're in power to posture and position themselves for the next election, and that's the last thing the country needs right now. I'm still hopeful that the Speaker will come around to a responsible way to solve a problem, but I hope that doesn't include the deal that was on the table because Obama was giving away too much in his effort to get a deal that would avoid default.

What's missing from the talks is the simple fact that seniors and middle-class families didn't cause the debt and shouldn't have to pay for it. Shredding the economic security of struggling families and small businesses is simply the wrong way to go. It's a bad deal for America, even it it's bipartisan.

The answer now seems pretty clear — if a fair deal can't be arrived at promptly, the president and legislative leaders should do what's both achievable and what makes the most economic and policy sense: They should have a clean vote on the debt ceiling now so we can end the gridlock and get to the business of governing and addressing job creation and other top priorities.

By Ethan Rome - Executive Director, Health Care for America Now

If the Republicans get their way and turn Medicaid into a so-called block grant, millions of seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes. Middle class families would be slammed with crushing health care costs for their parents while struggling to make ends meet, save for their own retirement and send kids to college. Children and people with disabilities will go without needed care. Huge costs will be shifted to state governments, jobs will be lost and the economy will be hurt.

All of this is why Democrats have to resist the Republican plan to destroy Medicaid as fiercely as Democrats and their allies are fighting the Republican proposal to end Medicare as we know it.

Now is the time to intensify this battle. We're right on the merits, we're winning on Medicare, and the public is with us. Just as voters are overwhelmingly opposed to privatizing Medicare and replacing it with inadequate vouchers, there is also strong public support for preserving Medicaid services like critical nursing home care for seniors. Half of Americans report a personal connection to Medicaid, either for themselves or a friend or family member.

The political environment has changed dramatically since the Republican plan was first proposed. Democrats and advocacy groups have taken the offensive with a huge national Medicare fight. Democrat Kathy Hochul ran on the issue and scored an upset victory in the deeply red 26th congressional district of New York. While four Republican senators stood up to their party and rejected this misguided proposal, the rest of the GOP has closed ranks and made support of the plan a litmus test for presidential candidates.

The Medicare proposal is part of a Republican assault on the middle class that also includes this draconian attack on Medicaid and the people who benefit from it — seniors, children, and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. They're making these and other cuts (like tuition assistance for college students) to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and tax breaks for Big Oil and other special interests.

Medicaid covers nearly 60 million people, about half of them children. Seniors and people with disabilities make up one-quarter of Medicaid enrollees and account for two-thirds of Medicaid spending. Medicaid is the primary payer for 64 percent of all nursing home residents. These folks count on it to protect them at a time in their lives when they have no other choices.

How would the Republican Medicaid scheme work? Under the current system, state Medicaid programs receive federal matching funds based on the number of people in need and the costs of care in that state. Under the GOP's block grant proposal, states would instead receive lump sums set in advance and capped. The Republican plan eliminates Medicaid's guarantee of coverage and would slash nearly $800 billion in services over the next decade. Federal spending on Medicaid would be cut by 35 percent in 2021 and in half by 2030. So it's not a courageous innovation from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan — it's a shift of billions of dollars of costs to state taxpayers and a dramatic reduction in needed services.

If states wanted to maintain their current level of Medicaid services, they'd have to make unacceptable cuts in other areas or raise new revenues. In reality, those states would be forced to make substantial and painful cuts. Fewer people would be covered, and their benefits would be scaled back. Other states, such as those with Republican governors who have been agitating in favor of this plan, would impose especially deep cuts. These cuts would have a far-reaching impact on families, businesses, state governments and regional economies:

• Millions of seniors would be left without nursing home coverage, their families forced to dig into their own pockets to care for them. The average cost of nursing home care in the U.S. is $74,800 a year, while the median household income is only about $52,000. The math just doesn't work.
• Three million jobs would be robbed from our national economy, jeopardizing our recovery when job creation should be the top priority.
• Millions of children in low-income families would have to make do without adequate medical services, hurting their quality of life and the quality of their education. For example, children with conditions like unmanaged asthma and chronic allergies would miss school and find it difficult to concentrate when they are in attendance, compromising their school performance and limiting their educational and economic prospects.
• Billions of dollars in health costs will be shifted to the states, which will no longer be able to turn to the federal government for resources to care for more people in need because of economic downturns or emergencies.
• Millions of Americans in the sandwich generation will find it impossible to save the hundreds of thousands of dollars they will need for their own retirement and health care along with the health care needs of their parents. Combined with other pressures like cuts in college aid, working and middle class families will fall farther and farther behind.
• What's more, the block-grant plan would shift hundreds of billions of dollars in costs onto doctors and hospitals, sending private health plan premiums even higher.

The Republicans' Medicaid & Medicare plan isn't just an attack on health care — it's a systematic effort to undermine the economic security of all of America's families. We can't preserve and expand the middle class if people don't have affordable health care they can count on. These days, people have enough to worry about with high unemployment, rising gas and food prices and mortgages they can barely afford. Democrats have forced the Republicans to blink on Medicare. They should do the same on Medicaid, and the rest of us should do our part to help.