WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) joined Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Tuesday to blast the Trump administration and Senate Republicans for their continued sabotage of our health care system. The senators also called on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring legislation to protect people with pre-existing conditions to the floor of the U.S. Senate for a vote. 

“Every single day over the last two and half years, President Trump has been engaged in an intentional attempt to sabotage our health care system. Right now, the administration is heading to court to attempt to get the judicial branch to do what the legislative branch would not –  and that is repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act,” said Murphy. “If the Trump administration is successful this year in this court case, overnight we will have a humanitarian catastrophe on our hands in this country. 20 million people would lose insurance, 12 million of them would be on Medicaid – those are the most vulnerable, the most disabled of our population.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that over 1 million more people are uninsured in 2018 than were in 2016. Last year, 18 Republicans Attorneys General – led by Texas – sued the federal government, arguing that protections for pre-existing conditions in the ACA are unconstitutional. In December, Murphy blasted the ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who threw out the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, throwing the American health care system into chaos. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in this lawsuit in July.

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below:

Every single day over the last two and half years, President Trump has been engaged in an intentional attempt to sabotage our health care system. Right now, the administration is heading to court to attempt to get the judicial branch to do what the legislative branch would not –  and that is repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act. This isn’t a joke, this isn’t a political stunt, this is real life. Because if the Trump administration is successful this year in this court case, overnight we will have a humanitarian catastrophe on our hands in this country. 20 million people would lose insurance, 12 million of them would be on Medicaid – those are the most vulnerable, the most disabled of our population. 

And most days, Senate Republicans are pretending that they aren’t actually members of Congress, they pretend as if Donald Trump is kryptonite having robbed their powers to legislate, they can legislate, they can pass legislation, they could use their voices to stand up and say that this administration should withdraw this lawsuit. Instead, they have effectively made themselves co-counsels in this lawsuit by standing here silently on the Senate floor, day after day after this killer lawsuit proceeds through the court system. 

My son is really good at telling me that he is getting up in the morning out of bed. He tells me that over and over and over again and then he never actually gets out of bed. And I tell him it’s not good enough to tell me you’re getting out of bed, you actually have to get out of bed. And I think about him when I listen to Republicans tell us over and over again that they want to protect people with pre-existing conditions and then day after day do absolutely nothing about it except to effectively endorse the strategy of this president to take away those very protections. First through the legislative process and now through the court system. Senate Democrats are going to be standing up week after week to make sure everyone in this country knows that this president and this caucus – the Senate Republican caucus – are in league together in this killer lawsuit.

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