Letter: Proposed health care bill is step backward

An open letter to Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst:

I implore you to vote no on the pending Senate health care bill.

As a practicing physician in Iowa and working on the front lines of health care, I promise you passage of this bill will have devastating effects on your constituents. The Affordable Care Act and its provisions are far from perfect and much work could be done to improve health care and how we pay for it across Iowa and the country. Unfortunately, the recently released draft bill is a step backward.

The most glaring problem is its massive cuts to Medicaid spending which are so disastrous the whole bill must be defeated. These devastating cuts will lead to fewer vulnerable Iowans having health insurance meaning asthmatics without inhalers and diabetics without insulin. I see these people in my work every day. Some are disabled, some work, many are children, all are Iowans needing your help, they need you to save their health care by voting no on this bill. They need your help more than a high earner like me needs a tax cut. And these vulnerable, honorable Iowans need your help more than the millionaire and billionaire financiers and executives in New York, Chicago and San Francisco who will benefit most from the tax cuts in this bill. When this bill is presented, have the courage to stand up for Iowans and vote no to this tax cut masquerading as a health care fix.

Brian Lindsay

Coralville