Blumenthal And Murphy: ‘Titanic Political Fight’ Over Health Care Looms

June 24--Connecticut's two senators brought their fight with the Republican-led Congress over health care to the state Friday, declaring a "titanic" battle is coming.

"We are at the precipice of a titanic political fight," Sen. Richard Blumenthal said at a news conference with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy.

Blumenthal and Murphy lambasted the Senate Republicans' health care plan as an evil proposal that would slash Medicaid to provide tax cuts to wealthy Americans and have a catastrophic humanitarian and fiscal impact on the state of Connecticut.

"I've been in and around health care policy for a long time and I've never seen a more intellectually, morally bankrupt health care proposal than this one," Murphy said. "There is something truly evil at the root of this measure."

Both senators expressed cautious optimism they would be able to defeat the bill, but warned that President Donald Trump has unilateral power to decimate the current system under Obamacare if the bill fails. They said the defunding of Planned Parenthood that is included in the proposal, which Blumenthal chided as "a war on women's health care," could be the deciding factor in convincing moderate Republicans to oppose the legislation.

The senators also criticized what they said was a secret process in drafting the legislation, and said the rush to vote on the bill will make a "mockery" of usual Senate deliberations.

"The CBO will give you the national numbers," Murphy said, referring to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that will release its analysis before the Senate vote, expected next week. "But it takes two weeks to take that and distill it down into state-by-state impact. So we will vote on this bill without truly knowing the impact on the state, and every senator will vote on this bill without truly knowing the impact on their state."

Hundreds of supporters packed the aldermanic chambers at New Haven City Hall, where Blumenthal and Murphy held an emergency field hearing on the Republican bill. No congressional hearings were held on the health care legislation, but the senators vowed to take the stories they heard in New Haven back to Washington with them.

Kent O'Brien told the senators he takes eight prescription medications -- four for psychiatric conditions and four for medical conditions. If he loses his insurance coverage, he won't be able to afford them.

"For the Republicans that are seeing this in Washington can you please listen to me carefully: If I do lose that medication I will end up in the hospital and it's going to cost the state and the federal government much more money for me to be hospitalized than it would be for me to simply go to the pharmacy and pick up my medication," O'Brien said.

Lynn Ide, director of program and policy at the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, gave the senators a cape with photographs of Connecticut residents who would be negatively impacted by the Republican health care bill.

"You two have been superheroes for us down in D.C.," she said.

Earlier in the day, Blumenthal met with Dorothy Powers at the Monsignor Bojnowski Manor nursing home in New Britain, where she has been living for two years with no complaints.

Blumenthal told her he was there to complain about the Senate Republican health care bill, which includes deep cuts to Medicaid, the federal insurance program that about 70 percent of nursing home residents rely on.

"People are just beginning to understand and realize the impact" of the legislation, Blumenthal said as he walked through the facility.

Matthew Barrett, president and CEO of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, which represents 160 nursing homes and rehabilitation centers, said Connecticut's population is aging faster than the rest of the nation. The number of state residents over age 65 will increase 51 percent by 2025, he said.

Long-term care insurance can be prohibitively expensive, Barrett said, so most seniors, even those who are wealthy, ultimately wind up relying on Medicaid to cover nursing home costs.

Carol Anne Salvietti, executive director of the Monsignor Bojnowski Manor, said nursing homes already don't receive enough in Medicaid reimbursement to cover all of their expenses. Slashing Medicaid dollars would mean the facilities would have to curtail services or raise rates for the small percentage of residents on private insurance.

There's been a drop in nursing home population over the last few years but an increase is coming as the baby boomer generation continues to age.

"We're on the uptick now and the next couple of years we expect a huge influx of boomers with multiple needs," Salvietti said.

The senators' final stop of the day was the Southwest Community Health Center in Bridgeport, one of 17 federally qualified health centers in Connecticut. Those health care centers serve 376,000 patients a year, 64 percent of whom use Medicaid.

Deb Polun, director of government affairs and media relations for the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut, said she's afraid that many of the 200,000 people in Connecticut who received insurance through Medicaid expansion will end up uninsured if the Republican bill becomes law.

"Our state and many other states can't afford" to maintain Medicaid coverage at current levels if federal funding is cut, Polun said.

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