Thursday was the seventh anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. Patients and healthcare activists marked the occasion at the Utah State Capitol Rotunda protesting current efforts by Congressional Republicans to repeal and replace the law known as Obamacare.
The gathering featured art and poetry from community members impacted by healthcare issues. Stacy Stanford of the Healthcare Rights Coalition said that it was intended to give the issue a human face.
“We’re looking at 24 million lives losing coverage. Healthcare is an issue that gets really wrapped up in numbers when it’s very much about people, sick people, disabled people, and poor people,” Stanford said. “The conversation should be focused on humans and not budgets. I attempted to do that through the event through art work.”
27 percent of voters in families with household incomes below $30,000 say they believe they will lose their coverage, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. Stanford added that she is worried for those close to her who fear cuts in Medicaid.
“They’re wanting to put it under the per-capita caps, they want to block grant it. Those are all just fancy words for cutting funding. I have friends that rely on Medicaid for the places they live,” she admitted. “They rely on Medicaid to stay out of a nursing home, some of them rely on Medicaid, unfortunately, to stay in a nursing home.”
The GOP-backed American Health Care Act faces obstacles to passage as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan struggles to get the House Freedom Caucus to give the needed ‘yes’ votes. Opposition to the plan in the general public is coming from a majority of men, women, Democrats, independents, whites, and racial minorities.
Stanford warned that it is still too early to call it a victory for backers of the ACA.
“I don’t think, ‘Oh good, it’s dead on arrival,’ because even if they do say, ‘If we don’t pass this then we’ll just stick with Obamacare,’ that’s not necessarily true,” she said. “The goal is still to gut Medicaid. They’re still going to dismantle the health reform system. They might not do it all in one fell swoop but there still are going to be lives at risk.”
The AHCA bill was pulled from an expected House floor vote Friday afternoon.
