Delgado Campaign Releases New TV Ad Focused on Healthcare
Antonio first met Hillary and her daughter Esmé when they knocked on the door of our campaign office, wanting to talk about healthcare. Hillary lives in our district, in Rensselaer County, and is a determined advocate for quality, affordable healthcare for everyone. She is motivated by her own incredible daughter, Esmé.
Esmé is a fun-loving, smiley, and energetic girl who is medically-fragile with developmental delays. Hillary wrote on her blog that since becoming Esmé’s mother, she has devoted herself to trying to improve the lives of children like Esmé through storytelling, education, advocacy, and medical research.
When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was in danger of being repealed, Hillary spent months attempting to set up a meeting with her congressional representative, John Faso. Faso refused to meet with her, and despite a public promise to protect his constituent’s healthcare, Faso cast the deciding vote to advance the Republican-sponsored American Health Care Act out of the House Budget Committee and then voted again to pass the bad bill on the House floor.
His votes meant forcing families to pay higher premiums and deductibles, increasing out-of- pocket costs and gutting protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Additionally, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimate, the bill would result in 23 million Americans losing their health care coverage over the next 10 years. It would also mean $13.7 million in cuts for 13 hospitals in our district. Hillary was outraged.
Hillary penned a public letter to Faso, writing “I now have very good reason to believe that the resources that quite literally keep my daughter alive are at risk in ways I never could have imagined, thanks, in part, to you.”
Faso finally agreed to a meeting, but only after her public letter. Hillary and Esmé met with him and shared their story, telling him how his vote to repeal the ACA was her nightmare and trying to make him, as a father, realize how his vote to repeal the ACA puts children like Esmé in peril.
She wrote about Faso’s vote to repeal the ACA, “With your vote you stated your priorities. You prioritized the wealthiest people in this country over the health, safety, and well-being of my child and children like her. And you did it surreptitiously. You did it despite the calls from your constituents begging you not to. You did it without waiting for information from the Congressional Office on Budget Priorities. You did it despite the clear majority of Americans who opposed the bill. You’ve made it clear who you stand with. Who matters most to you. And it is absolutely not my child.”
Hillary also spoke at a local rally against repealing the ACA where she said, “It isn’t a question, I have to speak up about these issues because it’s life and death for my daughter.”
Hillary and Esmé are featured in our latest ad, “Worth It” which shares their story and a commitment from Antonio.
“Growing up here, I learned the values of honesty and responsibility. Congressman John Faso told his constituents, like Hillary and her daughter Esmé, that he’d protect their health care but then voted to cut it,” Antonio said.
“Congressman Faso, you’ve taken over $800,000 from corporate donors and voted to take away health care,” Hillary said. “Now, you and your backers are attacking Antonio Delgado because he wants to make healthcare available and affordable. Congressman Faso, can you tell my daughter that all that money was worth it?”
