AGAINST THE GRAIN
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called some 1,600 Pittsburghers to the ramparts Saturday night, urging the crowd to oppose Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“We will not be part of a process which takes from working families, takes from the sick, takes from the children, takes from the elderly, takes from the poor, in order to give huge tax breaks to people who don’t need them,” he thundered in a David L. Lawrence Convention Center ballroom.
“A great nation is not judged by the number of millionaires and billionaires it has” but by “how well it rests the most vulnerable,” said Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist whose 2016 Democratic campaign for president took fire with younger voters.
The speech was part of a hastily arranged three-state tour, organized by the national advocacy group MoveOn.org after Republican senators unveiled a repeal bill last week.
Speakers denounced the process behind that bill, which was crafted by a small group of senators without a single public hearing, and warned of its consequences. Republicans say the repeal will end punitive mandates and offer more choices. Critics say it would weaken coverage guarantees, impose increasingly stringent limits on Medicaid spending, and offer tax breaks that largely benefit high-income earners.
Mr. Sanders castigated the repeal bill as “a barbaric and immoral piece of legislation” in a 30-minute talk littered with adjectives like “unconscionable,” “horrible” and “unspeakable.”
If a repeal bill passes, he warned, some 28,000 Americans could die by 2026, a projection made by Harvard researchers on the assumption there will be one excess death for every 830 people who lose coverage.
Mr. Sanders ticked off a list of those at risk from repeal efforts, from the very young to the very old. “What every person in Pennsylvania should know — and I think a lot do not — is that Medicaid now pays for over two-thirds of nursing-home care. … How many seniors now in nursing homes will get thrown out on the streets or be forced to live in their children’s basement?”
“This is code red. We are here to show the entire country the energy, the passion it will take to stop this bill,” Ben Wikler, MoveOn.org’s Washington director, told the crowd.
Mr. Wikler said polling showed that the number of Americans supporting repeal efforts was about as large as the population that believed chocolate milk came from brown cows.
“It’s about the same. Possibly the same people,” he said.
Mr. Sanders drew a smaller crowd than he did during his presidential campaign. But the audience was energetic and featured a familiar mix of backers, including younger voter groups like the Democratic Socialists of America.
Prominent Republicans were lustily booed, including Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, one of 13 senators who crafted the bill. The crowd cheered a dig by speaker Dan Doubet, the executive director of the progressive group Keystone Progress and the parent of two children with autism.
“Senator Toomey,” Mr. Doubet said, “my sons are not, as you say, burned-out buildings.”
That was a reference to an analogy Mr. Toomey made in January, when he said forcing insurers to cover patients when they were already sick was like asking an insurer “to rebuild the house after it has burned down.” Mr. Toomey’s office said he was talking about the challenges facing the industry, and the danger of younger, healthier Americans avoiding premiums by not buying insurance.
While the evening’s focus was solely on health care, there were occasional expressions of regret about what might have been in 2016. From the stage, Angel Gober, organizing director for the activist group Action United, noted that she backed Mr. Sanders during the Democratic primary.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” she said. “Had we won, we wouldn’t be having this fight today.” Chris Potter: cpotter@postgazette.com