Gardner’s Record Exposed: Sham Bill Dismissed As A “Political Document,” No Plan To Replace Health Care Law He’s Voted to Gut

Two new deep dives from the Colorado Sun today show how Senator Cory Gardner has failed to put forward a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act despite his repeated efforts to dismantle the law, and exposes his bill claiming to protect pre-existing conditions coverage as a sham “political document.”

The Sun points out that “if Gardner and congressional Republicans have a better idea” than the health care law they’ve voted repeatedly to gut, “they haven’t shared it.” Gardner also dodged questions six times in a row on his party’s lawsuit that would strike down the entire health care law and eliminate coverage protections for pre-existing conditions, refusing to admit his support. 

But as the vulnerable incumbent faces an increasingly difficult re-election, he’s attempted to paper over his health care record, which has put him “in the difficult position of trying to explain how he backs elements of a broader policy that he doesn’t support and has worked to eliminate for years.” Gardner’s latest effort to distract from his record, a sham bill that was pilloried by experts, is so bare-bones that it “doesn’t contain any of the usual features of legislation that are needed for implementation” and according to experts is nothing more than a “political document” designed to “give Sen. Gardner a convenient talking point.”

Read more on Gardner’s failed attempts to cover up his record of pushing to gut the popular health care law in the Colorado Sun:

Colorado Sun: Cory Gardner wants to get rid of Obamacare. But it’s not clear what he plans to replace it with.

By Jesse Paul

Key Points:

• Ask the Republican senator from Colorado about how to improve health care and the first response you’re likely to hear is that President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed. It’s “destroying this country,” he once said.

• Ask Gardner for his plans to replace the law, however, and his response will probably be more about what he’s against… than what he’s working toward.

• But if Gardner and congressional Republicans have a better idea, they haven’t shared it. 

• President Donald Trump has spoken of coming legislation, but part of the problem has been GOP infighting over how to move forward. That killed the party’s chance to unwind the Affordable Care Act in 2017, as they’d vowed to do for years, when Republicans took control of Congress and the White House. “We haven’t kept our promise,” Gardner said last year. 

• Democrats see the lack of a Republican health care plan as a liability for Gardner and are working to make sure voters know about the gap heading into November. They are making health care a top issue in Colorado’s 2020 U.S. Senate race, in which Gardner faces a difficult path to reelection. 

• Gardner’s opponent, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, and his Democratic allies are already running ads slamming Gardner over his votes to roll back or undo the Affordable Care Act.

• “Each time the Republicans promised that they would have a better plan, a different plan, a replacement plan —  the Republicans have no health care plan,” said Kathleen Sebelius, who served as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration, in a recent interview with The Colorado Sun.

• Gardner supports parts of the Affordable Care Act that are most popular… but Democrats attack him by pointing out that any effort to unwind the law would jeopardize those provisions. That’s left the senator in the difficult position of trying to explain how he backs elements of a broader policy that he doesn’t support and has worked to eliminate for years. 

• Adding to the difficult politics around the health care law, polling shows Americans increasingly like Obamacare, meaning that calling for its demise may no longer be so advantageous. Some Republicans have even begun shying away from discussions about repealing the policy.

• Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to rule after the November election on a Republican challenge, backed by the Trump administration, to the constitutionality of the law. Gardner has refused to say if he supports the legal action, which threatens to invalidate Obamacare, but Democrats contend his silence is proof that he’s either ambivalent or supportive of the effort to unwind the policy in the nation’s highest court.  

• Health care policy experts, however, say there’s nothing simple about policies protecting preexisting conditions and that a close look at Gardner’s bill shows that it would still allow health insurance companies to deny people coverage. 

• Levitt, who served as a health care adviser for former President Bill Clinton, and other experts explained that Gardner’s bill — which is just one sentence long — lacks a guaranteed-issue clause that would require health insurance companies to provide coverage to anyone who applies. 

• But so far, with Election Day fast approaching, Republicans have not introduced a comprehensive plan and the Affordable Care Act’s future remains uncertain. 

Colorado Sun: Here’s how Cory Gardner’s bill would and wouldn’t protect people with preexisting conditions

By John Ingold

Key Points:

• [H]ealth policy experts say that Colorado U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s Pre-Existing Conditions Protection Act of 2020 wouldn’t entirely do what its title promises. 

• On top of that, the bill doesn’t contain any of the usual features of legislation that are needed for implementation.

• Gardner’s bill… does not contain any regulations around charges based on age, gender or other factors.

• It used to be that health insurers could decide they just didn’t want to sell coverage to someone because that person was too unhealthy. Current law requires them to sell health insurance to everybody, what’s known as the “guaranteed issue” provision.

• Gardner’s bill contains no such explicit provision. His camp argues that the language of his bill effectively provides this guarantee, but experts are skeptical. Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan who is a national expert in health law, said the bill would mean insurers “could altogether refuse to sell coverage to that person. I don’t care what Senator Gardner’s office thinks the bill says. That’s in fact what it says.”

• Gardner’s bill does not contain a guarantee of specific coverage benefits. Without such a provision, an insurer could decide it wouldn’t cover treatment for certain chronic diseases for anyone, regardless of when they develop the disease, making a promise to protect that preexisting condition meaningless, health policy experts say.

• Gardner’s bill contains no subsidy provisions.

• “If you guarantee coverage for preexisting conditions and didn’t do anything to attract healthy people to the market, the premiums would just explode,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and a former policy advisor to the Clinton administration. “There’s nothing in Sen. Gardner’s bill to preserve the premium subsidies that are in the Affordable Care Act if it were overturned.”

• If the ACA is overturned, Gardner’s bill — if passed… wouldn’t come close to replicating the total coverage protections and benefits that the ACA provides…

• Currently, about 115,000 people in Colorado purchase insurance with the help of federal subsidies, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Combine that with the more than 420,000 people who have gained coverage under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion in Colorado, and you have more than a half-million people in the state who would suddenly lose or struggle to afford health insurance if the ACA went away. That’s nearly 10% of the state’s population.

• The lack of specificity in Gardner’s health bill leads Bagley to conclude that the proposal “isn’t a genuine effort to address the deep problems in a complex health care system. It’s a political document, and it looks like all it’s designed to do is give Sen. Gardner a convenient talking point.”

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