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Floor Statement of Rep. Danny K. Davis During the Healthcare Debate March 24, 2017

03/24/17

Mr. Speaker,

I rise in strong opposition to this Draconian Robin Hood in reverse bill, take from the poor and give to the rich. This supposedly health plan bill in reality is a bill which turns back the clock on access to healthcare for low and moderate income people, rural people, urban people.  A bill which eliminate education, prevention, screening and early detection for millions, a bill which has more focus on tax savings for the rich than healthcare for the poor. Mr. Speaker this bill we are talking about defies logic. Under this bill millionaires and billionaires will get a huge tax cut as 24 million American people lose their healthcare protection. Under this Republican plan, the nation’s richest 400 families will get a $7 million dollar tax cut every year. This plan gives a $ 25 billion dollar tax break to large pharmaceutical companies. This plan wipes out the hard won gains that health professionals associations, and health advocates have fought and struggled for decades, so that healthcare might be seen as a right for the many and not a privilege for  the few.

 Mr. Speaker, we have seen millions of activated citizens struggle to bring us out of healthcare darkness into the light of a brighter day, with education, prevention and screening at the core.

James Weldon Johnson was right about healthcare when he wrote in the Black National Anthem! “Stony has been the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died, yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed, we have come over ways that with tears have been watered, we have come, treading a patch through the blood of the slaughtered, out from the gloomy past until now stand at last. Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast”.

Mr. Speaker, we have come too far in healthcare and won’t go back. Healthcare must become a right for all Americans. No more second class medicine, no more waiting in emergency rooms where there are no doctors. We refuse to go back to the agony, pain and suffering with no hope for tomorrow. Healthcare must become a right for all people and not a privilege for the few.

I will vote NO!!! I yield back the balance of my time. 

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