Republicans Flee In Terror From Their Positions And Records On Healthcare-- Too Late

ObamaCare Repeal by Nancy Ohanian

Republican incumbents who have consistently voted to defund Medicare and Medicaid and cut back on Social Security have found those positions are unpopular. So they're lying about their votes and claiming they're the candidate who will protect, for example, preexisting conditions-- even though they voted to destroy the only bill that protected them without offering an alternative that would. As Paul Krugman mentioned last week Goodbye Political Spin, Hello Blatant Lies... "Black is white and up is down, and Republicans are defenders of Medicare... [R]right now the most intense, coordinated effort at deception involves health care-- an issue where Republicans are lying nonstop about both their own position and that of Democrats.

The true Republican position on health care has been clear and consistent for decades: The party hates, just hates, the idea of government action to make essential health care available to all citizens, regardless of income or medical history.

This hatred very much includes hatred of Medicare. Way back in 1961, Ronald Reagan warned that enacting Medicare would destroy American freedom. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that happened. Newt Gingrich shut down the government in an attempt to force Bill Clinton to slash Medicare funding. Paul Ryan proposed ending Medicare as we know it and replacing it with inadequate vouchers to be applied to the purchase of private insurance.



And the hatred obviously extends to the Affordable Care Act. Republicans don’t just hate the subsidies that help people buy insurance; they also hate the regulations that prevent insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. Indeed, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit trying to eliminate protection for pre-existing conditions, and the Trump administration has declined to oppose the suit, in effect endorsing it.

So if you’re a voter who cares about health care, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out where the parties stand. If you believe that Medicare is a bad thing and the government shouldn’t protect people with pre-existing conditions, vote Republican. If you want to defend Medicare and ensure coverage even for those who have health problems, vote Democrat.

But Republicans have a problem here: The policies they hate, and Democrats love, are extremely popular. Medicare has overwhelming support. So does protection for pre-existing conditions, which is even supported by a large majority of Republicans.

Now, you might imagine that Republicans would respond to the manifest unpopularity of their health care position by, you know, actually changing their position. But that would be hopelessly old-fashioned. As I said, what they’ve chosen to do instead is lie, insisting that black is white and up is down.

Thus Josh Hawley, as Missouri’s attorney general, is part of that lawsuit against Obamacare’s regulation of insurers; but in his campaign for the Senate, he’s posing as a defender of Americans with pre-existing conditions. Dean Heller, running for re-election to the Senate in Nevada, voted for a bill that would have destroyed Obamacare, including all protection for pre-existing conditions; but he’s misrepresenting himself just as Hawley is.

And they aren’t just lying about their own position. They’re also lying about their opponents’. Incredibly, Republicans have spent the years since passage of the ACA accusing Democrats of wanting to destroy Medicare.

All of which brings me to a remarkable Op-Ed article on health care in USA Today, which was published under Donald Trump’s name this week. (If he actually wrote it, I’ll eat my hairpiece-- although, to be fair, it was rambling and incoherent, suggesting he may have played some role in its composition.)

Part of the article claimed that the Trump administration is defending health insurance for Americans with pre-existing conditions, when the reality is that it has tried to destroy that coverage. But mostly it was an attack on proposals for “Medicare for all,” a slogan that refers to a variety of proposals, from universal single-payer to some form of public option.

And what did “Trump” say Democrats would do? Why, that they would “eviscerate” the current Medicare program. Oh, and that they would turn America into Venezuela. Because that’s what has happened to countries that really do have single-payer, like Canada and Denmark.

Why do Republicans think they can get away with such blatant lies? Partly it’s because they expect their Fox-watching followers to believe anything they’re told.

But it’s also because they can still count on enablers in the mainstream news media. After all, why did USA Today approve this piece? Letting Trump express his opinion is one thing; giving him a platform for blatant lies is another. And as fact-checker Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post put it, “Almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.” Even the president of the United States isn’t entitled to his own facts.

So will the GOP’s Big Lie on health care work? We’ll find out in a few weeks.

Right now Democratic candidates across the country have been stunned by Republicans falsely claiming their votes to end protections for people with pre-existing conditions were votes for something else instead and that their votes to turn Medicare into a voucher system wouldn't have really done anything to destroy Medicare, etc.

Let's take Mimi Walters from Orange County (CA-45). On February 3, 2015 she voted for H.R. 596, a bill entitled To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Every Democrat voted NO but only e Republicans joined them in actually trying to protect people with preexisting conditions.Mimi Walters was not one of them. Among the other Republicans lying about their records now but who voted for this bill include Don Bacon (NE-02), Duncan Hunter (CA-50), Steve King (IA-04), David McKinley (WV-01), Michael McCaul (TX-10), Chris Collins (NY-27), Brian Babin (TX-36), Doug Lamborn (CO-05). Why mention those? Their opponents, Katie Porter, Kara Eastman, Ammar Campa-Najjar, J.D. Scholten, Kendra Fershee, Mike Siegel, Nate McMurray, Dayna Steele and Stephany Rose Spaulding are all campaigning on platforms that include Medicare-For-All.

Mike Siegel, who just got the Houston Chronicle endorsement today, told us that "McCaul is so far removed from the people of this District that he still promotes his vote to repeal Obamacare and remove protections for pre-existing conditions. He essentially voted to kill his own constituents. McCaul’s only chance to win re-election is the ‘straight ticket’ option here in Texas. Very few voters recognize him as a true representative of their interests."

Stephany Spaulding is a pastor running in the evangelical center of Colorado, Colorado Springs. But... she a progressive, African-American woman pastor who is not running on a Republican-lite platform. The DCCC is ignoring her district entirely, but there's something stirring there. Her opponent, Doug Lamborn is one of the most extreme members of Congress. He has no influence, no impact and does not for the district at all. "The record," Stephany told us, "is consistently clear. GOP incumbents have lacked the political courage to stand with the majority of Americans who not only desire, but deserve affordable and accessible healthcare for all. Instead they have put party over people, leaving their constituents to suffer with the rising costs and diminishing coverage. I choose to stand with my constituents and the 70% of Americans who desire Medicare for All."

Texas Democrat Dayna Steele (TX-36) is making headway in a very red district east of Houston against an anti-healthcare dentist, Brian Babin, who fumbled his way into Congress and sits on the backbenches doing nothing at all except voting for whatever Trump wants. Today she told me that Babin "has voted every single time to repeal the ACA and has NO plan in place for healthcare if there is a repeal. He is literally leaving people to die. Any bill he co-sponsors to do otherwise in these last few weeks before the election is nothing more than a smokescreen for what they really intend to do."

She was referring to the newest Republican trick in which they are writing a bunch of fake bills that will never be voted on but that are supposedly going to protect people with preexisting conditions. Of the 49 Republican incumbents in the most competitive races 32 rushed to sign on as co-sponsors in the last few weeks, even though their actual voting records tell a very different story. "[F]acing the threat of a 'blue wave' and an onslaught of health-care attacks from Democratic candidates, vulnerable Republicans are running ads on pre-existing conditions and co-sponsoring measures that critics deride as meaningless.

The congressional resolutions are “a quick Hail Mary for a list of endangered incumbents,” said Thomas Miller, a resident fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of “Why ObamaCare is Wrong for America.”

“They’re intended to provide at least some legislative cover in the event that they can read the polls and know there’s been a stampede of support for the broad-brushed pre-existing conditions protections similar to those in the ACA,” he said.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in August found that more than 72 percent of Americans think the protections-- prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them more for coverage-- should remain law.

Democrats in June seized on the Trump administration’s announcement in court that it would not defend ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The Department of Justice sided in large part with the 20 Republican state attorneys general who filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn ObamaCare.

Now Democrats, who are looking to flip both the House and Senate, are tying Republicans to that decision, while highlighting the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal-and-replace efforts, which they say would have diminished pre-existing conditions protections for people in the individual market.

Tyler Law, the national press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said the “overwhelming majority” of campaign ads from the DCCC and Democrats have focused on health care, with pre-existing conditions as the central theme.

"Republicans are stuck on defense, forced to respond to devastatingly effective ads on their record on pre-existing conditions, and touting nonbinding resolutions as they panic because they see the political fallout,” Law said.

"Republicans clearly recognize how politically disastrous their policies are in regards to pre-existing conditions,” he added. “They are now just making up an alternative record on which all of a sudden they seem to care about pre-existing conditions.”

Reps. David Young (IA) and Pete Sessions (TX)-- two Republicans running in competitive races this year-- introduced separate resolutions in September supporting pre-existing conditions protections. Later that month, Rep. Steve Knight (R-CA), who is locked in a toss-up race, introduced a similar bill.

Young, Sessions and Knight have taken every single opportunity offered by Paul Ryan to gut Medicare and to end protections for people with preexisting conditions. They are counting on their constituents not knowing and not checking.

Jared Golden, a former frontline marine who served several tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq knows just how to respond to his Republican opponent's bullshit. Note the e-mail his campaign sent out this week to Mainers:

Congressman Poliquin started running an ad calling Jared his "young opponent."

Let’s clear up some facts: When Rep. Poliquin was living it up in his mansion on the coast-- and using it to get a tax break-- Jared was under hostile fire leading Marines against our nation's enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Poliquin was hiding from constituents and reporters in a bathroom because he voted to strip health care from thousands of Mainers, Jared was leading the charge to expand Medicaid in Maine.

Rep. Poliquin might try to portray Jared as too young, but we think it’s all about maturity and honesty-- and that’s why we’ve got to get Jared to our nation’s capital.