Rally in San Francisco after GOP health care bill passes House
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- House Republicans passed their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare on Thursday and now it goes to the Senate.
But all of California's 14 Republicans voted yes.
Governor Brown says millions of Californians will lose coverage, those with pre-existing conditions will be abandoned and costs will skyrocket.
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People from all over the Bay Area came to rally outside Senator Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco office after the House narrowly passed the GOP's health care bill.
Feinstein said she's 100 percent opposed to the bill and says it's outrageous that House Republicans passed it given the fact that nobody fully understands how the bill will affect Americans or how much it will cost.
President Trump said this about Obama's Affordable Care Act after Thursday's vote: "It's dead. It's essentially dead."
Kendrick Lewallen is one of the many Americans who is concerned the new American Health Care Act will strip protections from millions of people, like he and his mother who have pre-existing conditions and, until the ACA was passed, could not get health insurance.
"I lost my healthcare because of my pre-existing conditions and I'm very emotional about this. My mother almost died from cancer and if it wasn't for Obamacare, she wouldn't be here today," Lewallen said.
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"There is no standard definition to what a preexisting condition is," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a patient's advocacy coalition.
Wright says the GOP's bill would leave 4 to 5 million Californians without coverage. "It would raise premiums and deductibles for millions of Californians," he said.
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But Jason Clark, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, believes the new bill will pass when it goes to the Senate. "I think it's a tremendous opportunity," he said. "So many people have seen their premiums skyrocket under the current bill and I think this is a tremendous opportunity to sort of reverse that."
Clark says President Trump's healthcare bill failed in March because, "the first attempt was too rushed."
But Democrats say this latest bill is even worse, with no opportunity for non-partisan analysis by the congressional budget office.
Click here to read Covered California's full statement.
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