Chairman Aguilar: Donald Trump and Republicans have already created a massive health care crisis in this country with their Big Ugly Law—the largest health care cut in United States history.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu held a press conference on the Republican affordability and health care crises. You can watch the full press conference here and read the transcript below.
CHAIRMAN AGUILAR: Good morning, and welcome back. As we come back in this session, following Republicans’ nearly two-month taxpayer-paid vacation, House Democrats’ top priority remains the same—lowering health care costs for the American people. Republicans have wasted time by refusing to negotiate with Democrats on a deal that would extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. These tax credits allow hardworking families to see their doctors when they get sick, get medication or have lifesaving surgeries. If Republicans let these credits expire, millions of Americans in red, blue and purple districts will be forced to make incredibly difficult financial decisions, or be priced out of health care altogether.
An example: in my district, Amy in Redlands is a small business owner. She told me that her health care would jump from $650 per month to $2,000 per month. Amy said she doesn't know if she'd be able to afford her living expenses, let alone this increase. Unfortunately, this is not a unique example around the country. As the richest nation in the world, we cannot allow this to happen. For years, Republicans have been hell bent on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but have no replacement plan. Donald Trump and Republicans have already created a massive health care crisis in this country with their Big Ugly Law—the largest health care cut in United States history. By failing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, Republicans will only exacerbate this. The time to act is now. We should get going today. Vice Chair Ted Lieu.
VICE CHAIR LIEU: Thank you, Chairman Aguilar. So, Republicans have continued to attack health care. They passed a law and enacted policies to make health care more expensive. They made deep cuts to Medicaid. There's a $500 billion cut slated for Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act is going to dramatically increase because of Republicans’ attacks on health care. Yesterday, a Gallup poll came out showing that this is now weighing on American people's minds in a very big way; nearly half of American people, 47 percent, believe they cannot afford health care next year. And then Gallup asked a second question, about drug prices, and one in five Americans say they or one of their family members can no longer afford prescription drugs. That is the highest that survey has ever recorded, since they asked that question. And so we're asking Donald Trump Republicans to get serious and work with Democrats on bringing down health care costs instead of increasing health care costs. And nothing Republicans are doing this week is going to help reduce the cost of health care.
We also know that other costs are rising, and so they put out a statistic about Consumer Price Index changes to groceries from January to September of this year. It shows that coffee increased 15.3 percent, ground beef increased 14.2 percent and bananas increased 7.9 percent. So, Trump's tariffs and the rubberstamp Republican House Members are increasing costs at grocery stores as well. We recently saw that the Trump administration is going to lower tariffs on some grocery items. That is finally an acknowledgement that Donald Trump has been lying to the American people all along. Tariffs, in fact, are not paid by foreign countries. They're paid by Americans. That's why grocery prices have gone up, and that's why they're going to continue to go up, because most tariffs are still on a lot of grocery items and a lot of products. We're asking Donald Trump to stop these tax increases on Americans and deal with affordability, which is on the top of Americans’ minds.
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