“Four Pinocchios All Around”: GOP Senators in Close Races Mislead on Pre-Existing Conditions [Washington Post Fact Checker]

“Voters Deserve Straight Answers When Their Health Care Is on the Line, Especially in the Middle of a Deadly Pandemic”

“It’s a Classic Case of Buyer Beware: Look Under the Hood of What Daines, Gardner and McSally Are Selling, and You’ll Find a Car Without an Engine”

In a new fact check analysis from the Washington Post, vulnerable Senate Republicans including Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, and Martha McSally were given “four Pinocchios all around” for misleading voters about their real records of trying to gut protections for people with pre-existing health conditions. In a desperate attempt to save their struggling campaigns, these vulnerable incumbents have tried to paper over their records with false ads and statements, but: “Look under the hood of what Daines, Gardner and McSally are selling, and you’ll find a car without an engine.”

Each of these GOP senators “have voted to end the Affordable Care Act” and put their constituents with pre-existing conditions at risk of being denied coverage or having their prices jacked up. Each of them have also offered “woefully vague” comments about the GOP lawsuit to dismantle the health care law that can all be interpreted as “tacit support.” Three and a half years into the Trump administration, there is still “no replacement plan” that Senate Republicans can agree on that would fully preserve current protections for pre-existing conditions.

As the Washington Post writes: “Voters deserve straight answers when their health care is on the line, especially in the middle of a deadly pandemic.”

“Senate Republicans are blatantly lying about their records of voting to gut protections for pre-existing conditions and enabling a dangerous lawsuit to eliminate those protections through the courts because they know they’re out of touch and on the wrong side of the issue,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “These misleading campaign ads and talking points from GOP senators are outrageously dishonest in the middle of a pandemic and a clear sign of desperation just months before the election.”

Washington Post: Fact Checker: GOP senators in close races mislead on preexisting conditions
By Salvador Rizzo
July 15, 2020

Key Points:

• Sound familiar? Just like President Trump, these Republican senators say they support coverage guarantees for patients with preexisting health conditions. And just like Trump, their records show the opposite.

• The president’s doublespeak — voicing support for these protections while asking the Supreme Court to strike them down — is spreading into some battleground Senate races this year.

• It’s a classic case of buyer beware: Look under the hood of what Daines, Gardner and McSally are selling, and you’ll find a car without an engine.

• We asked the Daines, Gardner and McSally campaigns whether the senators support or oppose the GOP lawsuit at the Supreme Court and how they would address affordability issues for patients with preexisting conditions if the ACA falls. None of their campaigns responded to our questions.

• Daines voted to repeal the ACA in 2013 and has supported efforts to repeal and replace the law more recently during the Trump administration.

• Gardner has been voting to repeal, defund or replace the ACA since 2011, the year after its passage. This year, his campaign website says nothing about the law, but his official Senate website says, “Fixing our healthcare system will require repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with patient-centered solutions, which empower Americans and their doctors.”

• In 2015, McSally voted to repeal the ACA when she served in the House. In 2017, she voted to replace the ACA with the American Health Care Act, which would have allowed insurers to charge higher premiums to patients with complicated medical histories.

• Three and a half years later, no replacement plan has emerged from the administration and Republicans in Congress hardly agree on what it would look like — or how to preserve the protections for preexisting health conditions.

• Experts say the Tillis proposal does not offer the same level of protection for preexisting conditions as the ACA, and they warn that millions of Americans could lose their health coverage if the ACA falls and the Protect Act is the only replacement.

• “Insurers before the Affordable Care Act had multiple and redundant ways that they could avoid people who had preexisting conditions,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Protect Act… “leaves enough other loopholes that it would make it very possible and likely for insurers to be able to avoid paying benefits for the conditions they most worry about,” she said.

• Voters deserve straight answers when their health care is on the line, especially in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

• Daines, Gardner and McSally have voted to end the Affordable Care Act. People with preexisting conditions would have been left exposed because of those votes; insurers could have denied coverage or jacked up prices for sick patients.

• The three senators’ comments about the GOP lawsuit are woefully vague, but they can all be interpreted as tacit support.

• Asked about the case, a Daines spokesperson said “whatever mechanism” to get rid of the ACA would do. McSally’s campaign “didn’t specifically answer, but pointed to her general disapproval of the ACA.” Gardner avoided the question six times in one interview, but in another, he said: “That’s the court’s decision. If the Democrats want to stand for an unconstitutional law, I guess that’s their choice.”

• Four Pinocchios all around.

Read the full fact check analysis here.

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