Tax breaks for billionaires, but no healthcare subsidies

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in Medicare and Medicaid, and they are also not eligible to purchase coverage on the ACA Marketplace. Yet the GOP keeps lying that this is what Democrats want to “save.”

The over 24 million people who rely on the ACA are not illegal immigrants, they are working people and families with no other access to affordable insurance. Nearly 90% of the total growth in the ACA Marketplace since 2020 has occurred in states that Trump won during the 2024 election. Nearly half of the small business owners and employees in America buy their coverage through the ACA, as do over 25% of American farmers, and the vast majority of these people purchase their coverage using enhanced premium tax credits.

If our government can afford the millions of dollars to fly 800 top military brass and their aides to D.C. for one day and back home again, for messages that could have been delivered via their secure networks (government waste), it can afford to allow health care tax credits to our most vulnerable citizens. We are the only developed nation in the world that treats health care as a privilege instead of a right. Congress continues to pay its own salaries and health benefits, with all its dysfunction, and vote for ways that give breaks to billionaires, but can’t find a way to support our most vulnerable? And many call themselves Christians?

Jo Ann McNiel

Cedar Rapids