September 20, 2017

Barack Obama Just Blasted Republican Efforts to Repeal the Affordable Care Act

The GOP has a new bill to undo Obamacare. The former president isn’t happy about it.


Former President Barack Obama attacked congressional Republicans on Wednesday afternoon for their renewed efforts to repeal his signature law, the Affordable Care Act, better know as Obamacare. “It frustrates,” Obama said. “And it’s certainly frustrating to have to mobilize every couple months to keep our leaders from inflicting real human suffering on our constituents. But, typically that is how progress is won, and how progress is maintained.”

Obama was speaking in New York City at an event hosted by the Gates Foundation. During his wide-ranging remarks, Obama took a moment to offer criticism of the bill currently being considered by Congress, which Republicans are rushing to pass out of the Senate before a September 30 deadline. “When I see people trying to undo that hard-earned progress, for the 50th or 60th time,” Obama said, “with bills that would raise costs or reduce coverage, or roll back protections for older Americans or people with preexisting conditions, the cancer survivor, the expecting mom or the child with autism or asthma, for whom coverage once again would be almost unattainable, it is aggravating. And all of this is being done with no demonstrable economic or actuarial or plain commonsense rationale.”

You can watch the rest of Obama’s speech here.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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