The latest Republican bill to repeal Obamacare would be the most brutal cut to child health care in modern politics. Republicans plan to spend only 90 seconds debating it on the Senate floor.
NEWS: GOP Will Spend Less Than 2 minutes Debating A Bill To Decide Health Care For 40 Million Kids
In their latest Obamacare repeal attempt, Republicans have made clear that they do not care about regular order or Senate tradition, and are blowing up the schedule to get the nightmarish Graham-Cassidy bill passed.
GOP will spend less than 2 minutes debating a bill to decide health care for 40 million kids
Senate Republicans have organized a couple of sham hearings, but will move forward without a full CBO score and no time to mark up or amend the bill.
Even more shocking, due to the way they have forced the bill through the reconciliation process, they will only be allowing 90 seconds of debate on the Senate floor.
Rushing any significant legislation like this is bad enough, but to do so when the primary victims will be children is utterly cruel.
Graham-Cassidy’s main provision is to end the Medicaid expansion, institute per-capita caps, and distribute funding as block grants to states. The effect would be to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the program, and transfer much of what is left from blue states to red states.
Medicaid provides health care to 30 million children, and half of all births are covered by the program. Cuts this deep would force states to kick millions of kids and new mothers off their coverage.
Furthermore, Medicaid also funds occupational and speech therapy for millions of special needs students in public schools all across the country. These programs would be cut in droves if Medicaid funding falls, further hurting the most vulnerable.
In fact, the latest repeal push could hurt millions of kids even if the bill does not pass.
Little Lobbyists, an organization that advocates on behalf of children with complex medical needs, called the bill “terrifying.”
“This bill is looking to cut all of the safety provisions in place for families across the country,” said Austin Carrigg, a parent with the group, in a statement to Shareblue Media.
“So many of us we have wondered if our children would have a tomorrow, which makes these moments all the more important,” Carrigg continued. “Give them the chance to just be kids!”
Senate Republicans have until Sept. 30 to pass all reconciliation bills, including reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). If Republicans take too long on Graham-Cassidy, they will not have enough time to get CHIP to the floor, and 9 million kids covered by the program could lose insurance.
The idea that Republicans would even want to debate something as monstrous as pulling health care from millions of poor children is bad enough. That they think they can debate it in less than two minutes is beyond terrifying.
A broken-hearted father, who shared his four-year-old daughter’s pain and suffering as she battled cancer through a harrowing photograph that captured hearts around the world, has revealed he kept her body at home for 24 hours after she died.
Andy Whelan, 31, from, Lancashire in the UK released a black and white image of Jessica grimacing and crying during chemotherapy to treat her neuroblastoma.
Just three weeks later the girl passed away.
Speaking for the first time, since losing his ‘daddy’s girl’, Whelan said he and his partner, Nicky Prendergrast, 29, made the decision that Jessica should spend her final night in her own bed after she died. It allowed him to cuddle up to her and also read her favorite story to her.
Whelan has struggled with deep depression since losing Jessica but said he still treasures those last few hours.
‘With her passing on a Sunday, there wasn’t a lot of knowledge as to what was going to happen and the last thing we wanted was for her to be taken on a Sunday just to be laid on a slab in an environment we don’t know.
‘We had family that wanted to come down and say their goodbyes in the comfort of our home and our surroundings, not a funeral home and coffin.
‘On the Sunday evening I read her favourite story to her and we were able to cuddle up to her.’
Jessica’s body was picked up at 11.30am the following day. She was taken to Manchester University Hospital for a post-mortem to check she was healthy enough to donate her tissue towards a cure.
Whelan, who is now supporting a World Child Cancer campaign to raise awareness of a disparity in treatment across the world.
Here he shares the turmoil he and his family have faced in the last 10 months as they cope with the loss of Jessica. Mr Whelan reveals he has battled depression and suffered from nightmares.
He also confesses that he is tormented by milestones and why the distressing image of her agony will forever serve a permanent reminder that he and his partner made the right decision to end her treatment and let her go.
‘For the last few number of weeks we had moved her into our old bedroom and reshuffled it so she could be budged up alongside ours to sleep directly next to me.
‘We spoke in regards to us keeping her at home until the Monday so that we could spend that final time with her before she was taken from us.
‘So on the day she passed away, we moved her bed back into her bedroom and set everything back up again.
‘We had spent a lot of time with her in the final weeks and days at our bedside, but we thought it was only right that she was able to spend one final night in her bedroom.’
Battling to control the tears, he added: ‘It’s hard to gauge, but when she first passed away there was almost a sense of relief because she’d been through so much, especially in those final two weeks.
‘The day she actually passed away, we’d almost been praying, begging for her to go to sleep and not wake up.’