Joe Kennedy III: GOP ‘Skinny’ Bill a Way to ‘Destroy’ Health Care in This Country

EXCERPT:

KENNEDY: "So, let's be clear, first off, about what skinny repeal actually is. Skinny repeal is a way to destroy individual market and destroy what health care actually is in this country and is another way of setting up a -- which the fundamental core of what every single Republican proposal has been so far, about setting up a system for the healthy and the wealthy and another system for everybody else. What the proposal of skinny repeal means is that if you are healthy and well off, maybe you don't need insurance right now, but for everybody that does, your premiums are going to skyrocket. It's indicated that by some estimates CBO has said that 16 million people would lose access to their health insurance and premiums would go up by as much as 20 percent year on year. That is not the way you actually address the real health concerns that Americans have across the country. And there are real concerns here. Voting for this, whatever the end of -- or the end result's going to be in the Senate of what that bill looks like -- which, by the way, senators don't even know yet. But whatever that looks like means that it's going to come back to the House to engage in a conference where we cut -- Republicans in the house cut Medicaid by over $800 billion. So to say that voting on this doesn't touch Medicaid means that when it -- it's going to come to the House and it's going to come back and you're going to destroy it."