The most morally egregious bill every passed by Republicans in the United States House of Representatives passed last week.
They passed a bill to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. They did this to make good on a Trump campaign promise and on their political promise. Trumpcare passed at the moral cost of the lives and health of their constituents, Americans all over this country.
They say they are Christians.
I am not sure which Bible they are reading or to which God they are praying, but it is not the Bible that real Christians read because it contains many verses about taking care of the sick and the poor.
The celebration at the White House after the vote pictured mostly white men with smug looks on their faces.
They were clapping for the fact that they just voted to take health insurance away from 24 million people.
They were cheering because their plan will make a man in Gainesville, earning $30,000 a year pay more than $12,000 a year for health insurance instead of the $1,200 he now pays.
They're cheering a bill that will cause people over 50 to pay higher premiums merely because of their age.
The young and healthy will pay lower premiums.
Stacy Stewart, president of the March of Dimes says this bill will "especially hurt mothers and babies."
And those Republican representatives that passed this bill have no skin in the game-they are covered by different insurance that costs them hardly anything.
Because this bill eliminates the provision to cover pre-existing conditions and passes the decision on to the states, a person who depends on Medicaid for chemo and radiation treatment for breast cancer will face yearly premiums of more than $72,000.
People with diabetes could face $8,000 a year more in premiums.
Will the states decide to insure pre-existing conditions? Not if they do as Georgia, Florida and several other states did by not expanding Medicaid and leaving millions of people to suffer and die because they couldn't afford medical care.
Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor who helped design the Massachusetts health care plan-a state where only 2.8% of residents aren't covered by health insurance says this bill "cuts Medicaid to pay for one of the largest income redistributions from the poor to the rich ever" in our country's history.
It cuts spending for Medicaid by $900 billion and transfers those cuts to the group of Americans making more than $200,000 a year.
There is more.
The Congressional Budget Office wasn't even given the opportunity to rate this plan.
The CBO will do this before it goes to the Senate where hopefully, it will be voted down.
But in the meantime, these immoral Republican men and woman representing our district and others across the United States will have to try to sleep at night knowing that they put money and politics over the health and well-being of their fellow citizens.
Shame on them!
Bette Holland
Dawson County