Lt. Gov. Davis: “Unfortunately, President Trump refuses to see how millions of Americans are struggling with skyrocketing costs.”
WASHINGTON, DC — Today, ahead of Donald Trump’s appearance at a resort casino in northeastern Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, State Representatives Mike Schlossberg and Arvind Venkat, MD, and Pennsylvania Health Care Advocate Jennifer K. Partyka MSN RN participated in a press call to discuss Trump’s affordability crisis and its consequences for Pennsylvanians.
The speakers highlighted how, as a result of Trump’s failed policies and broken promises, costs are skyrocketing for everybody in the Commonwealth, from families to farmers to small-business owners. Trump’s anemic economy is hitting the poorest Pennsylvanians the hardest, and his policies are sending food prices, energy prices, health care costs, and housing costs soaring. Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania residents are facing an average health care premium increase of more than 100% for next year.
“Unfortunately, President Trump refuses to see how millions of Americans are struggling with skyrocketing costs for health care, for food and more, just basic necessities. People are being forced to make terrible choices: using buy now, pay later services to pay for groceries, putting off health treatments, worrying about how they’ll keep their heat on during the wintertime. These are real concerns that Pennsylvanians and Americans are facing, but the President, quite frankly, doesn’t seem to care. He thinks what regular Americans are going through is just a ‘con job,’ using his term,” said Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis.
“I can’t tell you how many phone calls we’ve gotten over the past few months, and accelerating over the past few weeks, from people who are talking about the desperate need to find relief for the suffering that they’re enduring, in terms of costs. You get people who get their health insurance from the Affordable Care market, who tell you that their health insurance costs are doubling, in some cases, tripling, and are desperately trying to find relief. As a result, they have to make a decision between buying health insurance to cover their conditions or going to the grocery store. You combine that with the other pressures that have been implemented on people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and at some point you start to wonder if the Trump administration and their Republican allies in Congress are intentionally trying to make life worse,” said Representative Mike Schlossberg.
“I was out door knocking in my community, in a middle-class area of my district, where there are a number of senior citizens. At every single door spontaneously when I asked, ‘what are the issues that you care most about, that you think I should be focused on as a state legislator?’ It was uncanny. Every single member of my community who spoke with me said affordability. ‘I can’t afford health insurance, the grocery prices have gone up, I can’t afford utilities, and I cannot afford what’s going on in maintaining my home,’” said Representative Arvind Venkat, MD.
“Since this administration has really targeted Medicaid, let me also explain that Medicaid is among the top five payers for most hospitals in the United States. Hospitals are not going to stay open. If you cut their funding sources, they will close. Can you imagine Pennsylvania with fewer hospitals, with fewer acute care beds? Our hospital systems are already stressed to the max. These changes in a patient’s access to primary and preventative care, because they lack insurance, will destroy our health care systems, which, for many reasons right now, are hanging by a thread,” said Jennifer K. Partyka MSN RN, Pennsylvanian Health Care Advocate.
A recording of the press call is available here.
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