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Hillary Clinton Slams GOP Health Care Bill: ‘Forget Death Panels,’ Republicans Are ‘Death Party’

By JohnThomas Didymus
Published on: 20:01 PST, Jun 23, 2017

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has attacked the Senate health care bill, warning the Republican Party that if Congress passes the bill, the GOP would become the “death party.” The former secretary of state made the comment in a tweet on Friday afternoon that included a retweet of a recent column by a progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress. The column cited Harvard researchers who predicted the Senate bill could lead to the death of 18,000 to 28,000 people in 2026.

“Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this bill, they’re the death party.”

By “death panels,” Hillary Clinton was referring to a line of argument that some Republicans had adopted in 2009 when they attacked former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). The former Republican governor of Alaska Sarah Palin suggested at the time that the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare, included provisions that would involve government bureaucrats selecting elderly people or special needs people who “deserve” health care.

This is not the first time that Clinton has tweeted comments about the Senate health care bill after it was made public on Thursday morning. Clinton had earlier called on people to call their senators to express their concerns about “Trumpcare.” She also retweeted a graphic shared by a former adviser to her campaign. The graphic purported to show the projected negative impact of proposed Medicaid cuts on young children.

Clinton is also not the only Democratic Party leader who has criticized the bill. On Thursday, former President Obama took to Facebook to send a warning to Republican members of Congress, saying that the new “bill will do you harm.”

“The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill,” Obama said in a lengthy Facebook post. “It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America.”

Hillary Clinton had shared Obama’s Facebook statement on Twitter earlier on Friday. The former Vice President Joe Biden also criticized the Senate Republican health care bill on Twitter using words that largely echoed Obama’s Facebook statement.

“The Senate health bill isn’t about health care at all—it’s a wealth transfer: slashes care to fund tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations.”

Significantly, President Donald Trump’s assessment of the House Republican version of the bill agreed with
criticisms by Democratic Party opponents, including Clinton and Obama. Multiple media reports claimed that a GOP Senate aide revealed that Trump had criticized the House Republican health care bill, describing it as “mean.”

On Thursday, after the Senate version was released, he reportedly expressed optimism that consensus would be reached and that the bill would be passed.

However, some Senate Republicans have expressed reservations. Analysts noted that if all Democrats vote against the bill, only two GOP votes would be required to stop it from passing. But many Republicans are voicing optimism that the issues would be resolved and that the bill would eventually be passed.

“After reviewing the initial working draft, I believe it includes many substantial fixes to our broken health care system,” Senator David Perdue of Georgia said. “Obviously, this will not be the final bill, but I’m hopeful that we can resolve the remaining disagreements and deliver a consensus bill that is a vast improvement over Obamacare.”

[Featured Image Patrick Semansky/AP Images]

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