“Republican Senate candidates’ pathetic excuses for protecting pre-existing conditions coverage are a master class in political pandering,” said American Bridge spokesperson Amelia Penniman. “Republicans are hoping voters aren’t paying attention to their long record of deception on this issue. We’re here to make sure every voter between now and Election Day learns just how empty Republican promises are.”
Huffington Post: GOP Senate Candidates Are Scrambling To Rewrite Their Record On Pre-Existing Conditions
By Jonathan Cohn and Kevin Robillard | September 2, 2018
- Josh Hawley “says he is all about making sure anybody can get health insurance, regardless of their medical status: ‘We need to cover pre-existing conditions,’ he said earlier this summer.”
- But Hawley “is one of the 20 state officials who has signed onto a new lawsuit seeking to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of coverage, which they argue is unconstitutional. Hawley is also a longtime supporter of Congress repealing the law outright.”
- “Hawley and other Republicans have no concrete or well-developed plan for replacing the law with something that would provide the same kind of access. If either the lawsuit he supports or repeal legislation were successful, people with cancer, diabetes and a variety of other chronic conditions would have a much tougher time getting comprehensive coverage. The GOP, including Hawley, is now talking up a Senate bill experts have said wouldn’t solve the problem.”
- “Hawley is hardly the only Republican Senate candidate making statements so inconsistent with his record.”
- “Mike Braun in Indiana, Martha McSally in Arizona, Patrick Morrisey in West Virginia, Rick Scott in Florida ― the list goes on. All across the country, Republicans running for Congress are promising voters they will look out for people with pre-existing conditions while supporting some combination of legislation, litigation and regulation that would undermine those very protections.”
- “There’s also the lawsuit that Hawley, along with officials from 19 other politically conservative states, has co-signed…Morrisey, the West Virginia attorney general who is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, also signed the brief. He supports repeal, as does Scott, who is trying to unseat Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida and has spent much of his time as governor fighting the law. McSally, who is now running for an open seat in Arizona, was in the House when it took up repeal. She voted yes.”
- “And then there is Matt Rosendale, the Republican candidate who running against two-term incumbent Sen. Jon Tester in Montana. Rosendale is the state’s insurance commissioner, putting him in a unique position not just to talk about health care policy but also to enact it. Among his notable actions was last year’s decision to reverse a long-standing prohibition on Christian health sharing ministries ― which, like the plans Trump just approved, have some combination of exclusions for pre-existing conditions, limits on coverage and big gaps in benefits.”
- “Protections for people with pre-existing conditions are wildly popular, and Obamacare itself is gaining in the polls…The political problem for Republicans is that voters aren’t likely to believe they suddenly care about pre-existing conditions, just because they say they do.”
- “The GOP’s whole rationale for repeal has always been that they have a better, cheaper way to achieve the ACA’s core goals, including its protection of people with pre-existing conditions. They have no such alternative, as last year’s repeal fight in Congress revealed. The question for the midterms is whether voters will notice that Republicans are making the same empty promises as before.”
Read the full article here.
Published: Sep 4, 2018 | Last Modified: Feb 1, 2024