Business Initiative for Health Policy Condemns Graham-Cassidy

The Business Initiative for Health Policy, a group of business leaders focused on progressing healthcare in America, has joined the swell of patient advocates, healthcare professionals, hospital groups, and others in condemnation of the Graham-Cassidy proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. While supporters are making last ditch efforts to pass Graham-Cassidy by adding incentives for specific states to try and coerce holdout Senators, the Patriotic Millionaires know that this bill would be bad for the country as a whole.

Morris Pearl, the Chairman of Patriotic Millionaires and a member of the Business Initiative for Health Policy, had strong words about the negative impact of the bill.

"Under the Graham-Cassidy plan tens of millions of people will be under severe financial stress. That financial stress will cascade onto their families, their landlords, their colleagues, the businesses where they shop, the municipalities where they pay taxes, and the tax-payer funded emergency rooms and hospitals. This bill would be bad for the individuals who lose access to health care, bad for business people, bad for taxpayers -- bad for everyone."

Gerald Friedman, a Professor of Economics and the Undergraduate Program Director at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is an advisor to the Business Initiative for Health Policy. He pulled no punches in his assessment.

"Graham-Cassidy will give states flexibility in the provision of healthcare in only one direction: down. There will be fewer opportunities for states to fix the inequities in our system or to fill in the gaps in our private insurance market. It will only create less access to care for the sick, for the needy, and for the elderly."