NEW: “Republican Senators In Tough Races Obscure Their Position On Pre-Existing Conditions” [NBC News]

Washington Post: Gardner, Daines, McSally Get “Four Pinocchios All Around” For Misleading On Pre-Existing Conditions

PolitiFact: Perdue’s “Record On Preexisting Conditions Doesn’t Match His Promises”

Vulnerable Senate Republicans are running TV ads insisting they’ll protect pre-existing conditions coverage, a claim that is “at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions” according to a new report from NBC News. 

The report points to recent ads from Senators Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, David Perdue, and Steve Daines in which the vulnerable incumbents pledge to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but all four of them have voted to gut the health care law that guarantees those protections and have enabled the ongoing GOP lawsuit to strike down the entire law in the middle of a pandemic. Senate Republicans’ “complete spin around” is a desperate attempt to rewrite their deeply unpopular records with ads that have been fact-checked as false and misleading as health care remains a massive “political liability” for Republicans that “could help determine control of the Senate.”

NBC News: Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions
By Sahil Kapur
September 15, 2020

Key Points:

• Republican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions.

• Gardner is one of several Republicans to obscure their record on preexisting conditions as rising public support for Obamacare turns the issue into a liability for senators who have voted to repeal it.

• Republican senators are fighting to maintain control of the chamber, and that has left many telling voters they favor the most popular provisions after they backed legislation that would have chipped away at the protections in the 2010 law. The replacement plans they’ve supported fall short of fully restoring those rules, say health policy experts.

• “When you’re in retreat it’s best to do it slowly and not make it look like a complete spin around,” said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

• Gardner’s 117-word-long legislation would require insurers “not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion” or “factor health status into premiums or charges.” The bill was introduced in August and has never received a hearing or a vote.

• Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said Gardner’s bill “contains a giant loophole” because insurance companies can simply “deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions.”

• The current rules, created through the Affordable Care Act, include “guaranteed issue,” meaning insurance companies have to sell policies to people regardless of health status, Levitt said in an email.

• “The Gardner bill leaves out that requirement, meaning that insurers could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, as they commonly did in the individual insurance market before the ACA,” he said.

• Gardner campaign spokesman Meghan Graf didn’t respond when asked if Gardner still favors ACA repeal, or why his bill doesn’t include the guaranteed issue provision. She wouldn’t say whether Gardner supports a lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to invalidate the ACA.

• Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who also faces a difficult re-election, released an ad in June rebutting her Democratic opponent’s criticisms of her health care record.

• But as a member of the House in 2017, McSally voted for legislation that would unwind much of the ACA and allow states to apply for an exemption from rules that prohibit insurers from charging people more if they have a pre-existing condition.

• Experts noted at the time that the waivers could pave the way for insurance companies to jack up costs and price sick people out of the market. (It passed the House but died in the Senate.)

• Several Republicans who voted to advance that effort in the Senate have also released ads proclaiming their support for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

• Perdue and Daines voted to advance the Senate repeal-and-replace measure in 2017. Daines also voted to repeal the ACA without a replacement as a member of the House in 2013.

• On his official website, Daines says, “I support full repeal of Obamacare,” and adds that “we must always protect those with preexisting conditions,” without getting specific.

• Miller, of AEI, thinks Republicans are doing what in military terms is known as “advance to the rear,” suggesting they are retreating while claiming otherwise.

Read the full story here.

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