Louisiana Budget Project Director Jan Moller released the following statement about the U.S. Senate’s decision to cancel a vote on Sen. Bill Cassidy’s health care proposal:
“This is excellent news for the nearly two million Louisianans who rely on Medicaid or the individual marketplace to purchase their insurance.
“The Senate’s effort to end the Medicaid expansion, gut traditional Medicaid and make consumer protections optional under the guise of ‘state flexibility’ was both disingenuous and cruel. It violated Sen. Cassidy’s earlier promise that no one would lose coverage and that people with pre-existing conditions would be protected. Instead, the Cassidy-Graham plan would have eliminated coverage for millions of Americans and brought us back to a time when insurance companies could discriminate against the old and the sick.
“The Senate now should focus on two critically important matters: renewing the Children’s Health Insurance Program and developing a bipartisan solution to strengthen the individual marketplaces.”