Representative Adam Smith

The president has ignored that and made severe cuts, not to mention, of course, what Secretary Kennedy is doing to our vaccine standards by running the department, the DHS, the way he is running it.

So it has been devastating.

And this shutdown fight is an effort to push back.

Yes, number one, we want to fund the Affordable Care Act tax credits so that people can continue to afford insurance.

But we also want to fundamentally challenge both the Republican budget, which has done such devastating things to health care, as I just described, and to the authoritarian way that Trump is leading that has undermined public safety in a thousand different ways.

It's a really important fight that we're having right now.

Yeah, two key points, and then I'll get to that third one that you just raised.

Washington state's a good example of what you were talking about at first there.

We had about 12% of the population in Washington state that was uninsured prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Between Affordable Care Act, subsidies to it, and improvements to Medicaid, that number has been reduced to 4%.

If this Republican budget is allowed to go forward, it will go back up to at least 12.

So I don't know what 8% of 8 million people is off the top of my head, but it's like maybe 700,000 people roughly who will not have health insurance in the state of Washington alone.

So we're talking about millions of people across the country who are going to be negatively impacted by this.

And then to your second point, people say, well, that's not me.

I'm not on the Affordable Care Act.

I've got insurance here.

I've got insurance there.

Not my problem.

But as you know, as a doctor, people still get care.

They just get uncompensated care.