As a small-business owner from York County, I’d like to respond to Biddeford state Rep. Martin Grohman’s claim in his Nov. 28 column that the Republican tax bill would help small-business owners in our state.

What I need to grow my business is access to affordable health care. Like many small-business owners and their families, we could not afford health care coverage prior to the Affordable Care Act. Our business would never have gotten off the ground or been able to grow at the rate it has without it. The ACA has allowed us the freedom to invest in our business and allowed many others to start businesses for the first time.

The Republican tax bill not only makes our tax system less fair and will grow our debt, it will also gut the ACA, leaving an estimated 13 million Americans – and 50,000 Mainers – without health care coverage and causing premiums to rise for others. Even in the unlikely event that President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell keep their promises to Sen. Susan Collins on health care policy, tens of thousands of Mainers will still lose coverage. This is on top of an automatic $25 billion cut in Medicare for seniors and a likely additional $1.5 trillion cut in health care programs in the months and years to come.

Rep. Bruce Poliquin has already shown his commitment to putting Wall Street profits over the health care of his constituents, and I hope voters in the 2nd District hold him accountable next November. Sen. Collins still has a chance to keep her word to defend our health care by voting against the final “compromise” tax bill.

On behalf of myself and hundreds of other Maine small-business owners, I hope she does.

Emily Ingwersen

Arundel

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