51 Caskets Drive Home the Impact of the Big Beautiful Bill

Moral Mondays is not a new form of protest, but the one in Washington, D.C. on June 30 was particularly poignant with its display of 51 caskets, each representing a thousand who will die in the coming year with the passing of what’s known as this administration’s Big Beautiful Bill — which threatens the health coverage and health care of people on Medicare and Medicaid.

The multicultural group that shows up on Capitol Hill or in front of the Supreme Court, continues to make the point that the rights and needs of poor people are inadequately represented by those elected to do so. 

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The largest ever cuts to America’s safety net were pushed through the House and the Senate without a single hearing for the people whose lives depend on these programs to testify. But Repairers of the Breach held a public hearing on the steps of the Supreme Court to hear the testimonies of those who will be most impacted, according to their website.

The lead convenor and founder, Bishop William Barber II, also a senior lecturer and CEO of Repairers of the Breach, explained the rationale behind the protest to MSNBC’s Morning Joe show.

“People are coming out, braving heat in a lot of these cases just to get lawmakers to understand what the impact is going to be for them; an impact that’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s just on people. It’s just life,” Barber said.

”More than 51,000 people, according to studies at Yale will die in the first year of this bill because it is a policy murder, a policy violence; this bill is morally indefensible and cuts more than 60 million people from healthcare unnecessarily just to give money to greedy and wealthy who don’t need it.”

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Barber called the bill a “damnable, destructive, ugly deadly, violent bill that is constitutionally inconsistent because these people swore to provide for the general welfare of all people and to ensure justice. There’s no justice about this and this bill is economically insane.”

Barber reminded that passage of the bill would also ensure closure of hospitals, especially in rural areas, which would certainly be a detriment to people’s health.

“So you might be 25 miles from a hospital. Now, this bill passes, you might be 200 miles from a hospital. That means that you’re outside of what’s called the one Golden Hour. You have a heart attack. You have an hour. You could die just because your hospital moved.”

He also stressed Congress’ unwillingness to hear from outside people, experts and impact people.

“What my prayer is, because you know they arrested us for praying; they need to be arrested for preying on the most vulnerable people in this country, but they’re turning on each other and my prayer is that will happen more and more because there’s no excuse. When people start dying, nobody will be able to say they did not know. They know exactly what they want for the love of money.”

One of the Moral Monday speakers, Chris Shumake traveled from Alexander County, North Carolina, with Pastor Joel Simpson to share what it would mean for him to lose Medicaid.

“I just finished high school and I’m doing auto technician systems training in August. I’m relying on Medicaid and SNAP to help me continue my schooling,” he said. “If I don’t have it, I’d have to go to school and worry about not being able to eat that day… If you can’t eat, you can’t focus.”

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