Our community is still grieving and many questions remain unanswered, including one major one—will we find a way to heal and rekindle a semblance of civility and mutual respect which many of us believe is critically important to making this a better place?
Events like the “Unite the Right” rally prompt many of us in elected office to dig deeper in advocating for the values that our constituents feel are important. Among those are access to health care, affordable housing, investments in children, and tolerance and diversity. Some in this country would use the issue of monuments to divide us; there are other issues, however, that we neglect at our peril.
Republicans Continued Assault On Health Care
We thought we dodged a bullet at the end of July as the Senate rejected repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but repeal is now again on the agenda in the form of the proposed Graham-Cassidy bill. Like previous approaches, this proposal would seriously affect Virginia by reducing insurance options and by “block-granting” Medicaid funding. Virginia is one of the most frugal states in terms of its Medicaid funding; block-granting federal reimbursements (now 50% of the program) would put great pressure on our budget. This bill may even be worse than previous repeal measures, but few know its precise costs and impacts since the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will not have time to project them before a vote. For that reason, every single member of the Virginia delegation and every single Delegate and State Senator should oppose this. As expected, Republicans have either embraced this new proposal or have remained silent. Please write your Congressperson, Senator, Delegate, and candidates for statewide office asking them to speak out. Post on social media. Write to the newspaper. We only have a few days to stop this ideological crusade to remove healthcare coverage from millions. [Read more…]