House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) compared the House-passed Republican healthcare bill — which gives states the power to decide whether to waive coverage guarantees for pre-existing conditions — to Pontius Pilate, the Roman who sought to avoid responsibility for the death of Jesus by passing along the judgment to an angry mob.

"They want to privatize Social Security, take the guarantee away from Medicare, devastate Medicaid and not have the affordable healthcare as we know it. ... I call it 'Pontius Pilate,' " Pelosi said during a CNN town hall special on Monday night. "It's a cowardly act to say I'm going to take away your pre-existing conditions. I'm going to say to the states, 'You do it.' You make the judgment as to what pre-existing conditions you will cover or not."

ADVERTISEMENT

According to the Gospels, Matthew 27:24, Pilate washed his hands as a sign of innocence in front of an angry mob.

Pelosi equated Pilate's action to Republican House members who are passing judgment to states in order to absolve themselves from problems or deaths that may occur under the GOP healthcare bill.

Pelosi said Democrats are focused on defeating the Republican measure that repeals and replaces provisions of ObamaCare.

“The whole point right now is to defeat that bill,” she said.

"And so what we're doing is to fight that legislation and to make it now — it passed the House. It has only gotten worse because — you have to understand, it's part of a deconstruction of government," Pelosi continued.

Pelosi spoke harshly about the bill.

"The way people have said it to me at town meetings and across the country and airports and wherever I see people is, they will say, 'This is a death panel bill because people will die,' " she said.

The California lawmaker also invoked a Martin Luther King Jr. quote that called lack of healthcare access a major injustice because it leads to deaths.

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane," King said.

Pelosi said King was right because "of all the inequalities, the most unjust and stunning is the injustice of access to healthcare, because people will die."