Pelosi: People Are Telling Me the AHCA Is a ‘Death Panel Bill Because People Will Die’

RUSH EXCERPT:

PELOSI: "The whole point right now is to defeat that bill. Because that bill raises costs for fewer benefits, has an age tax for anyone 50 to 64, kicks 24 million people — 24 million fewer people will not have access to health care, undermines Medicare and the point that you made is, it has the essential benefits like pre-existing conditions are left up to the states. The way people have said it to me at town meetings and across the country and airports and wherever I see people is, they will say, this is a death panel bill. Because people will die. Martin Luther King said of all the inequalities, the most unjust and stunning is the injustice of access to health care, because people will die.

"So what we’re doing is to fight that legislation and to make it now — it passed the house. It has only gotten worse. You have to understand, it’s part of a deconstruction of government. They want to privatize social Security, take the guarantee away from Medicare, devastate Medicaid and not have the affordable health care as we know it but some — I call it — it’s a cowardly act to say I’m going to take away your pre-existing conditions. I’m going to say to the states, you do it. You make the judgment as to what pre-existing conditions you will cover or not. That’s why across the country people are telling their stories. Their stories have sad endings in many cases without the affordable care act."