Any changes to health care law under the new administration should not abandon the principal of genuinely affordable health care for everyone, said the U.S. bishops in a letter to Congress.

In American policy, they said, “we must not see health care as a luxury, but as a necessary building block to help individuals and families thrive and contribute to the good of the community and the nation.”

“We recognize that the law has brought about important gains in coverage, and those gains should be protected,” Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida said in a Jan. 18 letter to members of Congress.

He wrote in his role as chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

For the U.S. bishops, any repeal of key provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act should not take place “without the concurrent passage of a replacement plan that ensures access to adequate health care for the millions of people who now rely upon it for their wellbeing.”

President-elect Donald Trump, in a press conference last week, pressed for a speedy repeal of the health care legislation commonly known as Obamacare. He has also spoken of replacing the legislation with his own proposals that promise “insurance for everybody” and “much lower deductibles,” CNN reports.

However, some Congressional Republicans have voiced concern about any vote that would end major parts of the 2010 law that covers 20 million people without providing an alternative, creating widespread disruptions.

The U.S. bishops emphasized that health care reform “should be truly universal and it should be genuinely affordable.”

Full story at Catholic News Agency.