FACT CHECK: “Is It True That Tillis Voted To Take Away Coverage For People With Pre-Existing Conditions? Yes.”

PolitiFact/WRAL Analysis Confirms: The Record Backs Up Cal Cunningham’s Ads, And Experts Say Senator Tillis’ Sham Bill “Falls Short”

A new fact check from WRAL and PolitiFact confirms that the record backs up Army veteran Cal Cunningham’s ads holding Senator Thom Tillis accountable for voting to take away coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And the fact check didn’t stop there: it also found that Tillis’ attempt to find political cover on pre-existing conditions and other Republican proposals “fall short” of offering the current protections in the Affordable Care Act.

Senator Tillis is not alone on this issue — Washington Republicans have been voting for years to dismantle the health care law as well as gut, undermine, and weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions. GOP senators also sparked a dangerous GOP lawsuit with their 2017 tax bill that could overturn the entire health care law and wipe away the protections for pre-existing conditions, threatening total chaos for the economy and our health care system.

Watch the analysis from WRAL here:

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

WRAL/PolitiFact: Fact check: Did Tillis vote to ‘take away’ coverage for pre-existing conditions?

By Paul Specht, PolitiFact reporter

February 27, 2020

Key Points:

• Is it true that Tillis voted to take away coverage for people with pre-existing conditions? Yes. Tillis voted to repeal a law, the Affordable Care Act, that provides that coverage.

• While repeal efforts have been unsuccessful, repealing and replacing the ACA has been part of the Tillis platform for years.

• He voted to repeal the ACA, and later proposed a different law that aims to address pre-existing conditions. But experts say the Tillis plan, along with other Republican proposals, fall short of offering the coverage in the ACA.

• “Certainly, this provision, if enacted, would have removed coverage of pre-existing conditions because it would have repealed the ACA in its entirety, which would have restored law to what it was prior to 2010, when pre-existing conditions often were not covered in most states, or by federal law,” said Mark Hall, a law and health professor at Wake Forest University.

• PolitiFact has repeatedly determined that a vote to repeal the ACA in full would have stripped coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Subsequent GOP-written bills to replace the ACA have not ensured the same level of patients with those conditions.

• Any bill that wants to protect pre-existing conditions needs to do three specific things, according to Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow studying health reform and private insurance for the Kaiser Family Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to researching national health issues.

• Pollitz said each bill should guarantee:
  • People with pre-existing conditions will be granted insurance. (The Tillis bill does this.)
  • Insurance companies will be prevented from price gouging. (The Tillis bill does not do this.)
  • Their pre-existing condition won’t be excluded from coverage. (“That’s not in his bill at all,” Pollitz said.)

• To prevent price gouging, health bills should offer subsidies. Tillis’ bill guaranteed the issuance of insurance but didn’t provide funding to make premiums affordable, said David Anderson, research associate at Duke University’s Center for Health Policy.

• “They can either leave the market entirely or dramatically increase premiums to cover a very sick and expensive group of people,” he said. “Since there are no premium subsidies in this bill, insurance will be too expensive for individuals who are in good health to purchase.”

• PolitiFact reported in 2019 that most of the Republican health care plans fail to fully protect people with pre-existing conditions. A fact-check of White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney singled out the plan proposed by Tillis and other Republican senators. It found that the bill included an option for companies to deny certain coverage if they weren’t able to “adequately” deliver services.

• That fact-check quote critics of Obamacare, such as health care consultant Bob Laszewski and former Republican Senate health care policy staffer Rodney Whitlock, saying the Republican proposals fall short of the coverage offered by the ACA.

• Our ruling: 

• Cunningham’s ad says Tillis voted to take away coverage for pre-existing conditions. It’s true that Tillis voted for a straight repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a move that likely would have left Americans with pre-existing conditions vulnerable.

• … experts agree that the Tillis proposal left loopholes insurance companies could use to avoid coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

• Cunningham’s statement… [is] correct about Tillis’ vote and the fact that other Republican plans fall short of matching the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. We rate it Mostly True.

Read the full fact check here.

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