Sen. Susan Collins did not try to avoid or sugarcoat the hard truth: the Trump administration's reckless attacks on Obamacare and the health care system will bring untold harm to a lot of people.
It's no secret at all how much damage Donald Trump and the Republican Party are trying to do to the nation's health care system.
Governors from all across the country slammed Trump for his latest attempt to sabotage Americans' health care, after the White House announced an end to cost-sharing payments to insurers, which will cause premiums to skyrocket and potentially drive some insurers out of the marketplace.
There's a reason the GOP's repeal plans keep failing: the whole idea is incredibly unpopular.
And one Republican senator did not try to sugarcoat the truth about why.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has repeatedly pushed back against her party's attacks on health care, was clear about the harm Trump is doing by scrapping the health care subsidies.
"What the president is doing is affecting the ability of vulnerable people to receive health care right now," she warned on CNN's State of the Union Sunday morning.
The subsidies are used "to help low income people afford their deductibles and their co-pays, so that their health care is available to them," she explained, noting that Trump has also gutted funding for Obamacare's advertising budget, meaning fewer people will even know about the subsidies to being with.
"These certainly are very disruptive moves that will result in smaller numbers of people being insured ... and that will destabilize the insurance markets," she warned.
When host Jake Tapper asked her if she was saying that "Trump is taking actions that will hurt American citizens," Collins was succinct.
"I do believe that," she responded. "I'm very concerned what the impact is going to be" for those lower income Americans who need those subsidies in order to make their health insurance payments.
As Collins' fellow Republican, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, put it recently: "It’s going to hurt people. It’s going to hurt kids. It’s going to hurt families. It’s going to hurt individuals. It’s going to hurt people with mental health issues. It’s going to hurt veterans. It’s going to hurt everybody."
The GOP leadership and much of the party is so dead-set on trashing President Barack Obama's legacy that they are willing to throw millions of lives into dangerous upheaval to do it.
But as Collins, Sandoval, and governors from red and purple states show, there is dissension among their ranks, and the American people need more voices of conscience from within the Republican Party to speak up for them and speak out against this sabotage.
