If they pass the GOP healthcare bill, Republicans in Congress will have to tell Americans that "they have to start worrying again" about paying for care, former Vice President Joe Biden wrote in a column for The Washington Post.
When Obamacare passed, "it meant we had finally decided, as a nation, that healthcare is a right for all and not a privilege for the few," Biden continued, slamming the Republican bill that is being debated in the Senate, saying that it "eviscerates" Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid and removes the Obamacare rule that requires care for maternity, mental health, and substance abuse.
"They want to drag us back to a time — not all that long ago — when Americans could be denied basic healthcare because they were unable to afford it," Biden wrote.
He said that a healthcare system should not be built around emergency room visits because "that's not a sustainable model, and we're better than that."
The former vice president noted that the original Senate bill contained $2 billion to cover mental health and substance abuse, which he called a "drop in the bucket." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell increased that number to $45 billion, but Biden said he is "missing the point."
The Senate bill cannot be fixed before it gets to a vote, Biden said, and "by denying that all Americans have a right to healthcare, it's fundamentally flawed."
Last month, Biden also criticized the Senate health bill in a series of tweets:
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