The Affordable Care Act survives for now. Your voice mattered in this!

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Dear Friends:

The U.S. Senate has failed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA)  Three GOP Senators plus every Democrat and Independent refused to vote for a poorly crafted bill that would cost tens of millions their insurance and raise premium costs on everyone else.

The straw vote for “repeal and don’t replace” is equally doomed by the same votes.  Were ACA – Obamacare – simply repealed, it would throw 32 million off health care immediately and would double the cost of premiums over the next several years. 

Your calls, emails, FAXes, and visits to your Senators – even friendly ones who already agreed not to harm ACA – were critical in this action today.  Americans, united in a single voice about the importance of health care, kept the focus on preserving what we had and not doing harm by repealing some or all of the plan.

Now we can see, as we did in the passage of ACA, that we have strength as citizens and as people of faith. 

We will keep watching the next issue – the federal budget – to keep up on cuts to ACA, to Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) or any other budget cuts, transfers, omissions that might impact our health care.  This will include cuts to items that lie outside the operating budget including Medicare and Social Security that have their own accounts but that are targets for cuts nonetheless.

The importance of your advocacy cannot be overstated.  Without your voices and your presence, we would be at high risk of losing health care for middle income to very poor people. We won this dispute. We will help you stay on top of new developments.  This is not over. We will be called once again we’re sure.

Thank you for all you do for justice!


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