R.I. doctor urges Congress to improve, not repeal, Obamacare

Jan. 04--A South County doctor who heads the nation's largest medical specialty organization has written to U.S. Senate leaders imploring them to vote against a budget resolution that would start the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act, knows as Obamacare.

Dr. Nitin S. Damle, president of the American College of Physicians, said in the letter dated Jan. 3 that the resolution will lead to a "repeal, delay and replace" bill that "would create chaos in insurance markets, causing plans to pull out of the markets with more than 7 million losing coverage in 2017 alone."

If the law is repealed in full, the letter said, 60 million people could become uninsured.

"While we acknowledge that the ACA is not perfect (and no law is) and improvements to it can and should be made," Dr. Damle, co-founder of South County Internal Medicine, said in the letter, "our continued support for the ACA is grounded in the fact that it has reduced the uninsured rate to the lowest ever, a major stride toward providing affordable coverage to all Americans."

"We encourage Congress to first put forward ideas for improvements rather than committing to a process that would repeal the ACA's coverage and protections for many millions of people."

The American College of Physicians represents 148,000 internal medicine physicians, related specialists and medical students.

larditi@providencejournal.com

On Twitter: @LynnArditi

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