Editorial: Senate's plan - Cutting care for needy, giving tax cuts to greedy

How can a responsible senator vote for legislation knowing it will take health care from those who now have it, need it and wouldn’t have it otherwise? The answer seems obvious: Party-line politics.

Tillis led the N.C. House of Representatives when the legislature, in mean and blindly partisan anti-Obama stubbornness, refused to take billions in federal funds to expand Medicaid to half-a million North Carolinians without access to health coverage.

The proposal now before the U.S. Senate would take coverage away from as many as 22 million Americans, including 1.3 million North Carolinians, who now have health care through the Affordable Care Act. That doesn’t include the half-million in North Carolina who never gained access to care because of the state legislature’s mean-spirited obstinance.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that no one would lose health coverage. Yet, Trump gathered House members at the White House for a photo-op to praise their terrible bill that would rip health coverage away from 24 million Americans. Only days later the president called it “mean” legislation and promised the Senate’s version would be better.

Of course, the Senate’s isn’t an improvement.

For eight years Congress has railed and postured against Obamacare – casting vote upon meaningless vote to repeal it. Hardly a peep was made about adjusting and improving the law to solve its problems.

Turns out all the political ranting was more about getting the partisan base worked up -- than it was about a plan to deliver health care to the nation. It was all show and no action.

Gov. Roy Cooper, soon after taking office, initiated efforts to take the federal funding and expand Medicaid to those who’d been left out. That effort, due to legal challenges from legislative leaders, remains tied up in the courts – imagine that.

Cooper, and those who do support expanding access to health care to more Americans, need to call out our members of congress and legislators. If they don’t believe access to health care is a right for all Americans, they should say it and not hide behind slogan like “repeal and replace” – particularly when it’s clear that there’s been no real thought given to any replacement.

While the president seems desperate to have ANY health care bill passed, it should be a good bill that IMPROVES on what people have today. Anything that reduces services or trims the number of people who receive support should be defeated.

Republicans now find that Obamacare wasn’t just a punching bag, but a sparring partner that’s become tough to knock down.