CALL: Senator Marco Rubio (202-224-3041 or 904-398-8586); Senator Bill Nelson (202-224–5274 or 904-346-4500).
The delayed vote on Senate GOP’s new ACA-repeal bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), represents an opportunity for Republicans to abandon their partisan obsession with dismantling the ACA and instead partner with Democrats to shore up the law. One major Republican critique of the ACA has been that the individual insurance markets are unstable and have increasingly high premiums. However, all analyses of these markets have shown that the markets are stable overall and that consumers have largely been shielded from premium increases thanks to tax subsidies. In fact, most of the instability of the insurance markets have stemmed from insurance company uncertainty about whether Republicans will continue paying the cost-sharing reductions that allow them to insure sicker people at lower cost. Healthcare spending has also slowed under the ACA, and people have objectively benefitted from increased access to healthcare, especially preventive services.
The Senate repeal bill actually maintains much of the ACA’s structure while cruelly cutting things like premium subsidies and funding for Medicaid expansion. Instead of trying to adopt a worse version of the ACA, Republicans should work with Democrats to implement a package of ACA fixes, from insurance market stabilization to negotiation of lower pharmaceutical costs, that would preserve (and even increase) access to affordable health insurance while still containing health care spending. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already called on Trump to meet with Democrats to find a bipartisan way forward. Now, it’s on Republicans to do the right thing and shift their focus from repealing the ACA to fixing the ACA.
Your script:
Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY STATE ZIP CODE].
[IF REPUBLICAN]: I’m calling to encourage Senator [NAME] to abandon his or her ACA repeal efforts and instead advocate for a bipartisan approach to healthcare reform. The majority of Americans want the ACA repaired, not replaced, and it makes far more sense to repair the existing bill than to replace it with a law that introduces a host of new problems while fixing none of the current problems.
[IF DEMOCRAT]: I’m calling to encourage Senator [NAME] to pursue a bipartisan effort to repair the ACA. The Republican plan to repeal the ACA is cruel and unacceptable, and the best way forward for the American people is to find a way to fix the ACA’s problems than introduce new ones.
Thank you for your hard work answering the phones.
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