Donald Trump and Republicans are making health care more expensive for people in the Inland Empire by gutting Medicaid by almost $1 trillion, cutting funding for Medicare by $500 billion, and failing to extend the Affordable Care Act Tax Credits

Rep. Pete Aguilar recently sat down with Dr. Jason Lohr, CEO of SAC Health, for a discussion on how Republican cuts to health care will drive up costs and make it harder for people in the Inland Empire to access quality, affordable health care. You can watch the full discussion between Rep. Aguilar and Dr. Jason Lohr here and read an excerpt from the interview below:

Rep. Pete Aguilar: You’re the CEO of the system, but you also are a doctor, and you still provide care… What is this going to mean to areas like the Inland Empire? You’ve seen this area grow. I remember giving speeches 20 years ago, saying, ‘the Inland Empire is two million people, and we’re growing.’ We’re 4.5 million people now in this region, and we continue to grow. What will these cuts mean to the Inland Empire? How will people feel it? How will everybody feel it?

Dr. Jason Lohr, CEO of SAC Health: When you’re talking about 300,000 people, that’s not a small amount, right? And those folks are losing their coverage. That’s going to happen here in the next 18 months… I know when we talk numbers, it’s easy to just get caught up in numbers and be like, well, what’s 300,000? But that’s like, each individual is a family. [It] represents a family, represents a person, represents, you know, they’re a member of the community. When one person in the community suffers, then others suffer, right? Their neighbors, their friends, their family, their extended family. There’s no way that there’s not going to be an impact…We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people losing their coverage.

Donald Trump and Republicans’ ‘Big Ugly Law’ represents the largest rollback of federal support for health care in U.S. history, including gutting Medicaid by almost $1 trillion and Medicare by $500 billion. This will cause emergency rooms to fill up, hospitals to close and health care costs to skyrocket. On top of these health care cuts, Donald Trump and Republicans have shut down the government because they are refusing to protect Americans’ health care or extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that help families afford their health insurance premiums. In California’s 33rd Congressional District, families covered under the Affordable Care Act will see their premiums go up by an average of $2,160 every year. Democrats are doing everything possible to save Americans’ health care from these cruel Republican cuts.