LANSING — Today, the Michigan House of Representatives approved legislation that would rob hundreds of thousands of Michiganders of their health care through the Healthy Michigan plan. In response, state Rep. David LaGrand (D-Grand Rapids) issued the following statement:
“The Healthy Michigan Plan was never designed to be a jobs plan. It was created to ensure that all working people have access to health care. Senate Bill 897 turns the premise of the Healthy Michigan Plan on its head, setting up new bureaucratic hoops and hurdles that working people, who sometimes already hold two or three jobs just to make ends meet, will have to satisfy to qualify to receive basic health care coverage. This is not ‘work with dignity.’ It is a humiliating process that will discourage and disqualify thousands of workers from the health care they and their families rely on to get ahead. Michigan won’t thrive when its people can’t see doctors. We need good jobs with wages and benefits, not laws that arbitrarily punish working people and take away their health care.”