In March 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress attempted to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) with their plan, the American Health Care Act. After a non-partisan CBO report estimated 24 million would lose coverage over the next 10 years and provisions that severely cut patient protections were added on last minute, the bill failed to even come to a vote. As Speaker Paul Ryan declared after, the ACA is still “the law of the land.”
Currently, Tennessee has the option to fully implement “the law of the land” here, by closing the coverage gap and providing access to insurance for 280,000 Tennesseans. Tennessee officials have refused to accept 2.6 million dollars per day from the federal government to help working class folks across the state access affordable health care.
Without expansion, the future is bleak. The Marketplace is unstable for 230,000 Tennesseans, 40,000 of whom won’t have a Marketplace option in 2018, and roughly 14,000 hospital jobs are at risk. We rank first in the country for the rate of rural hospital closures with 8 so far and 37 more are at risk of closing soon.
Please share your voice – your story, your concern, your plea - through a letter to the editor, urging Speaker Beth Harwell and our state legislature that we can no longer afford to do nothing.
