U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison Warns About Health Care Crisis for Minnesotans at House Steering and Policy Committee Hearing

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, U.S. Representative Kelly Morrison (MN-03), a doctor for more than 20 years, joined the U.S. House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee to highlight how President Trump and his Republican majority have created a health care crisis that will kick millions of Americans off of their health insurance, force hospitals and clinics to close, and make health insurance less accessible and more expensive for everyone.

The Republican's budget bill enacted the single largest cuts to health care in American historyand failed to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits for working families, which will cause health insurance premiums to double or triple for millions of Americans across the country.

In Minnesota, the Republicans' cuts to health care will kick 140,000 people off their health care, and cause health care premiums to skyrocket for 90,000 people across the state.

Rep. Morrison is in Washington, DC ready to work in a bipartisan fashion to stave off the devastating Republican health care crisis and end the government shutdown. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to convene the House since September 19.

Watch Representative Morrison's remarks HERE.

Read a transcript of Representative Morrison's remarks below:

Thank you for holding this hearing and for giving the people of Minnesota's Third District the opportunity to participate - the Third District that I proudly represent.

Prior to my public service as a legislator, I cared for patients as an OB-GYN for more than 20 years. And I can tell you as a physician, I am truly afraid for patients and for my colleagues that take care of them.

The Republican policies of gutting Medicaid and now threatening to not extend the ACA premium tax credits that have made it possible for millions of Americans to access health care will cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

Such a drastic increase in uninsured Americans will have dire consequences for clinics and hospitals already struggling to stay above water.

In Minnesota we're proud to have the kind of care that people travel from neighboring states, multiple hours, and in some cases hundreds of miles to access.

It's the kind of care the community, the state, and quite frankly the midwest region of the United States simply cannot afford to lose.

But Republicans have put the desperately needed care these facilities provide in serious danger.

A salient example in Minnesota is HCMC, a safety net hospital, level one trauma center, and a lifeline for the upper Midwest. It runs the busiest emergency room in the state of Minnesota and trains the physicians we count on in moments of crisis. The literal future of our physician workforce. And I might add, the hospital that took care of many of the children who were shot in the Annunciation Catholic School shooting.

It's safety net hospitals like HCMC that are strained even further under the circumstances Republicans have manufactured.

Facilities will be forced to choose what service lines they have to cut, what workers must be let go, what patients will be forced to go elsewhere for care that will no longer be available.

Failing to extend ACA premium tax credits and allowing devastating Medicaid cuts means those patients and patients of hundreds of physicians in this country will suffer because Republicans refuse to act.

When a person or family is without health insurance, it hurts their health in the short and the long term.

You delay care. You postpone your appointments. You wait until you need emergency care.

You give up the medications that were helping to keep your chronic condition from being life-threatening.

Your child misses the vaccine that could've prevented a hospital stay, or worse.

You miss the routine screening that could've caught the cancer early.

Investments in preventative care save lives and save taxpayer dollars. Safety net hospitals and their workforces struggle when a community is made sicker by delays in care and growing numbers of people without coverage.

Republicans are protecting billionaire tax cuts over the health of low- and middle-income families, on the American taxpayers' dime, and on the backs of the health care workers across the country.

And while all of that is more than enough reason to reverse that crisis, an analysis of the Republican health plan estimated over 50,000 preventable deaths as a direct result of the path Republicans have put us on.

So, Republicans are holding the government hostage at the expense of American lives.

They've spent the last eight months putting our vulnerable health care system on a fast-track to disaster.

They pushed almost 1 trillion dollars in cuts to critical health programs, endangering countless clinics and hospitals, many in their own districts, to deliver tax cuts that benefit billionaires.

Now they are demanding we support a plan that will result in millions of Americans paying hundreds more a month for health insurance, thousands more in many cases, or make the grim decision to live without coverage.

Over half of the Americans at risk for the highest impact live in districts THEY represent, but my Republican colleagues are out of town with no urgency to act.

It's unconscionable to me as a physician and should be absolutely disqualifying for the legislators failing to protect the health and well-being of the Americans they were elected to represent.

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