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Elizabeth Colatrella flew all the way from Denver to D.C. talk to her Republican Colorado U.S. senator, Cory Gardner, about health care. She failed.
And that led Colatrella, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and whose care is paid for by Medicaid, to join her caregiver, Melissa Benjamin, at a mass rally of hundreds of people, unionists included, protesting the secret Senate Republican health care bill.
The rally, in 90-plus degree heat on the U.S. Capitol lawn on Wednesday, came before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky unveiled the Republicans’ alleged “replacement” for the Affordable Care Act the next day. He wants a quick vote on it in the final week of June.
Release of the bill prompted protests outside McConnell’s office on Thursday by people with disabilities. Several demonstrators were dragged away and arrested, some pulled from their wheelchairs.
Like the House bill, McConnell’s plan features deep cuts in Medicaid, an after-the-fact tax credit for individuals who buy insurance and elimination of the individual mandate to do so. It also gives a huge tax cut to the rich and to corporations, as part of budget “reconciliation.”
And it taxes people, notably unionists, who benefit from so-called “Cadillac health care” plans.
The quick scheduling and stifled debate angered Democratic senators, who organized the rally at the last minute, along with other speakers and participants. All agreed that solons should reject the GOP plan and instead improve, not repeal, the seven-year-old ACA. And all demanded that lawmakers and the rest of the country get a look at what the GOP dreams up.
And they advocated public pressure, with a national call-in at 866-828-4162 to put pressure on senators to stop the GOP bill. “Now that we have an actual bill, working people will mount a massive effort to kill it,” the AFL-CIO responded.
ACA repeal would particularly hurt people like Colatrella, who need Medicaid to pay for their health care, Benjamin, a certified nursing assistant, and an organizer for Service Employees Local 105, told Press Associates Union News Service during the rally.
That’s what Colatrella planned to tell Gardner, a first-term conservative Republican, at a meeting that was actually scheduled with the solon in his office. But instead, Gardner refused to talk to them and shunted them off to an aide. He met them in a hall outside Gardner’s office.
“We were unable to share our story with him. You can’t discuss anything like this there,” Benjamin says.
The rally also drew members of AFSCME, the Teachers, Unite Here Local 23 in D.C., Working America, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National Partnership for Women and Families, among other groups.