Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during his victory speech at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, on February 9, 2016 during the DNC primary. The Vermont senator will travel to Kentucky on July 8 to rally against the GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act . File Photo by Ryan McBride/UPI | License Photo

July 8 (UPI) -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will hold a rally in Kentucky Sunday and ask voters to put pressure on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to oppose the Republican health care plan.

"There's no state in America that would be harder hit by McConnell's legislation than the state of Kentucky," Sanders said in a statement.


Sanders said that Kentucky has benefited from the Affordable Care Act and the Republican plan to repeal the health care legislation would be detrimental to millions of Americans, but especially to Kentuckians.

"Unbelievably, at a time when Kentucky has made significant progress in health care, the Republican bill being proposed in the Senate by Kentucky's own Senator Mitch McConnell would throw over 230,000 people in Kentucky off of health insurance," Sanders said. "It would also decimate the Medicaid program in the state which provides insurance for more than 2 million people, including 40 percent of all children."

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Sanders added that many people in Kentucky, which has been hit hard by the country's opioid addiction crisis, "would no longer be able to receive the treatment they desperately need" for addiction treatment.

McConnell has already had difficulty getting enough Republican senators on board to support the GOP legislation.

"The American people said, 'We elected a Republican president, a Republican House and a Republican Senate and we want to see some results,'" he recently told a Kentucky audience, according to the New York Times. "And I can't say anything other than I agree with you. But it is not easy, and we are going to continue to wrestle with this and try to get it done."

McConnell is even facing opposition from his co-senator in Kentucky.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also opposes the GOP bill because, he says, it doesn't go far enough to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

"The bill is just being lit up like a Christmas tree full of billion dollar ornaments. It's not repeal," he said.