Pelath laments as Trump, Pence continue to slowly suffocate Obamacare, HIP 2.0

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana House Democratic Leader Scott Pelath from Michigan City today issued the following statement in the wake of the latest outrages involving the Trump-Pence Administration’s efforts to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare:

“Indiana’s health care is being singled-out and sabotaged, all to help Mike Pence tell the story he wants to tell in Congress.

“The truth is that the people of this state like having health care that is reasonably priced and does not bankrupt folks with medical bills.

“Despite that, the Trump Administration remains hell-bent upon getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, by hook or by crook. They need the health care money to divvy out to the richest Americans in their corporate tax cut fantasy.

“If they cannot get their Republican colleagues to eliminate the program with no back-up plan—efforts that continue to this day—they are trying to suffocate it by other means.

“Now we find that the administration is making huge cuts in funding for the program that helps people sign up for the Affordable Care Act through ‘navigators’ that help people find coverage. According to the Washington Post, Indiana will see ACA outreach funding cut by more than 80 percent this year. That is the worst cut in the nation.

“Since the Vice President seems to have amnesia on this matter, let me remind him of a few things:

“By ending the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, we will be ending HIP 2.0 and depriving more than 400,000 Hoosiers of health care.

“We will be cancelling tax credits that help nearly 108,000 Hoosiers afford health insurance.

“We will be eliminating subsidies that reduce out-of-pocket costs for nearly 70,000 Hoosiers.

“This is inhumane. It defies logic, particularly when we also find that the Affordable Care Act has helped reduce the number of Hoosiers without health insurance by more than 40 percent.

“I thought having a Vice President might help our health care. Instead, it is an anchor around the neck of common-sense progress.

“What exactly is going on here? Does our former governor and his boss understand that if they succeed in financially strangling the ACA, it comes back to haunt the cherished HIP 2.0 program that Mike Pence once trumpeted as a shining achievement? Do these people even care if millions of people lose their health care, just so they can live up to a lame campaign promise?

“If these efforts continue, states like ours will be forced into either denying people health care or substantially raising taxes in order to ensure they keep it. Is this truly what Mike Pence wants?”