Schumer Remarks And Photos From Senate And House Democrats’ Event Showing The Faces Of Americans Who Would Be Hurt By Trump Republican Anti-Affordable Care Act Lawsuit

Washington, D.C. – Today, on the day of oral arguments in the Trump administration-backed Texas v. U.S. lawsuit in the Fifth Circuit Court—Republicans’ latest assault on our health care law—Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats showed the faces of Americans who would be harmed if the Trump administration and Republicans succeed in their effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and eliminate protections for the 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s remarks can be found here and below:

I want to thank our great, great Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and all of our friends from the House for joining Senate Democrats here on the steps. We are gathered because this is a critical day for the future of healthcare in America. Today in New Orleans, Republican attorneys general, supported by President Trump and his Department of Justice, will argue in court that millions of Americans should lose their healthcare, and all the protections included in the ACA.

The stakes cannot be higher. Imagine you’re a parent, and your child has a deadly form of cancer. There’s a treatment available, but the insurance company says “No, you can’t have that treatment, or we’re cutting you off.” What is Donald Trump, what are our Republicans friends telling that family? That you can’t get healthcare, and we have nothing to put in its place? Shame on them! Shame on them. The stakes can’t be higher.

The faces you see behind us are faces of Americans, millions of Americans, who will suffer if Republicans succeed in dismantling our healthcare law. Millions of people’s lives, nothing less, are on the line. If the right-wing wins the lawsuit, families from one end of America to the other will lose; lose their healthcare, lose important pre-existing condition protections, and lose their peace of mind that there might be something there to make them well.

It’ll hurt families in New York like little Emilie’s, here; a healthy, active seven-year-old when her life dramatically changed after she sustained a severe traumatic brain injury from falling off a horse in 2015. Emilie’s recovery has been long. It has been daunting. She has had to relearn how to walk, how to eat, how to talk, how to engage with the world around her at age seven.

But her biggest challenge was her family’s struggle. Because private insurance would only cover sixty days of rehab. Thankfully, her family was given what Emilie’s mother calls a lifeline. She received her care through Medicaid, as millions of Americans have in these types of situations. Because of ACA, and only because of ACA, she knows that she doesn’t have to worry that she’ll be denied healthcare, or charged prices so high that her family can’t afford them, because of her pre-existing condition. She’s going to live with this pre-existing condition the rest of her life.

I am, and we all are, fighting to keep Emilie’s protections, and those that millions and millions of Americans—not, Mr. Trump, the very wealthy who can afford it—but average families, working families, middle-class families, struggling families, who desperately depend on this healthcare that you, President Trump, and you Republicans are trying to take from them. We cannot allow it to happen.

The stakes can’t be higher. The bottom line is very simple. If Republicans prevail, these protections are obliterated overnight. And our Republican friends in the House and Senate are just mum. They go home and they say they want to protect pre-existing conditions, and then they act to take them away, and do nothing to preserve them. Hypocrisy. Blatant hypocrisy.

So, when President Trump declares that the Republican Party will be the party of healthcare, everyone knows he’s full of it. Don’t let President Trump fool you, America. Donald Trump and the Republicans want to take away your healthcare. We Democrats will be fighting tooth and nail to protect Americans’ healthcare for as long as it takes. And we will not stop until we succeed.

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