COMMISSIONERS CALL ON CONGRESS TO PROTECT AMERICANS’ HEALTHCARE
The Franklin County Commissioners unanimously passed on Tuesday a resolution calling on Congress to oppose any and all attacks on affordable, accessible, and comprehensive health coverage for Americans. Board of Commissioners President, John O’Grady spoke on the matter today at an event with city officials and executives from Mt. Carmel Health System, and the Board forwarded its resolution in a letter to Ohio’s congressional delegation this afternoon.
The commissioners’ letter to Congress says that “Comprehensive health coverage is essential to ensuring working families and retirees receive the health care they need, when they need it, and it should be affordable for all Americans,” and the resolution passed on Tuesday notes that “the Affordable Care Act has reduced the percentage of people without health insurance to historic lows by guaranteeing every American’s right to buy insurance, providing new financial support for buying individual coverage, expanding Medicaid, and encouraging many employers to contribute toward the cost of workers’ health benefits.”
Specifically, the commissioners are calling on members of Congress to oppose attacks on health coverage for Americans, including:
- Converting Medicare to a voucher system or increasing the eligibility age beyond 65.
- Imposing new taxes or other threats to employer-sponsored health coverage.
- Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement plan that protects all working families and seniors and ensures that anyone with coverage today is able to afford it and keep it.
- Any reductions in coverage for mental health care and substance use disorder treatment including a reduction in parity with physical health-related coverage.
- Repealing the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion to millions of Americans.
- Converting Medicaid to a block grant or per capita cap system for federal funding.
The text of the commissioners’ resolution calling on Congress to protect Americans’ healthcare can be found
here.