Today, Georgia health care advocates and workers held a press conference to address GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins’ vote to pass massive Medicaid cuts that “solidified” St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital’s decision to shutter its labor and delivery unit last fall—which sits in Collins’ district.
Last summer, Mike Collins voted to pass Donald Trump’s unpopular budget law that included over $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, another potential $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and threatens the affordable health care coverage of hundreds of thousands of Georgians already facing skyrocketing health care premiums. Reporting from the AJC found that the budget law could gut $540 million from Georgia hospitals like St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia.
Previously, Collins has praised the cuts Donald Trump’s budget law made to Medicaid, and told Georgians that he wants them to “get off Medicaid.”
WATCH FULL PRESS CONFERENCE HERE
“When rural hospitals lose a maternity ward or an emergency department or shuts its doors entirely, the whole community suffers,” said Protect our Care State Director Liz Ernst.” Mike Collins cast the vote that helped make these cuts a reality, despite representing communities like Lavonia that depend on rural hospitals to survive. Georgians deserve leaders who will fight to protect and strengthen our healthcare system, not vote to weaken it.”
“Our rural hospitals could be at risk of losing basically half a billion dollars, and Mike Collins supported that, even when it impacted a hospital in his own congressional district that he represents,” said St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Anesthesiology Nurse Joe Lawrence. “Mike Collins has proven that he doesn’t care […] about the rural hospitals. ”
“I am a registered Republican, actually, and I am a former nurse who worked at St. Mary’s Labor and Delivery Unit […] The last remaining standing labor and delivery unit was truly our hospital here at St. Mary’s and Lavonia. Now that it’s closed due to Donald Trump’s Medicaid cuts, we were forced to shut down” said former St. Mary’s Nurse Kara Holden. “Georgia mothers shouldn’t be forced to have to make those options. I should not have to make a plan with my healthcare provider for what I do if I deliver on the side of the road. These Medicaid cuts that Mike Collins supports have made that a reality for me and other mothers in the area.”
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