Fighting Back Against The GOP's Big Pre-existing Conditions Lie

Bryce will be a congressman for ALL people-- even if they wear suits

There's barely a red district in the country where the Republican incumbent isn't lying about healthcare. Regardless of their multiple votes to nullify protections for people with pre-existing conditions, they all claim the opposite. The Texas Observer noted this week that "a Texas lawsuit has put the ACA’s popular pre-existing conditions provision front and center ahead of midterms, to the chagrin of Republicans who have vehemently opposed the law for years."

“Everyone agrees we’re going to protect pre-existing conditions,” Senator Ted Cruz said in a debate this month. Yes, the same Ted Cruz who forced a federal government shutdown in 2013 to try to defund the Affordable Care Act, including pre-existing condition protections. The same Ted Cruz who has introduced measures weakening those protections and voiced support for a Texas lawsuit to eliminate them.

“I have never been for ending pre-existing conditions,” said Congressman Pete Sessions in September. On his website, Sessions boasts that he has “voted more than 60 times to repeal, dismantle, and defund” the ACA, which ensures that people with pre-existing medical conditions can’t be denied coverage or charged more-- one of the law’s most central and popular provisions.

“All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them,” President Donald Trump tweeted earlier this month. “Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not!” he added last week. But Trump’s administration is currently suing to overturn these protections in court and just last week issued guidance that makes it easier for states to opt out of coverage requirements.

Republicans in Texas and around the country are trying to lie their way out of a problem: The ACA’s pre-existing condition protections are extremely popular and remain a dominant campaign issue with one week to go before the midterm elections. But many Republicans now in competitive races have spent years fighting these protections as part of their vendetta against the federal health care law and President Barack Obama. Now, they’re trying to erase that history-- even going so far as to claim to be the crusaders for these protections, while actively suing over or railing against the law that created them.

The conflict is particularly potent in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a lawsuit to overturn the entire ACA, including pre-existing condition protections. The suit, filed by Paxton and 19 other Republican attorneys general in February, has been called “absurd” and “far-fetched” by attorneys and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The issue came to a head this spring when Trump’s Department of Justice sided with Texas in declaring pre-existing condition protections unconstitutional and declining to defend the law. If Team Trump is successful, the consequences would be huge. Texas already has the highest uninsured rate in the country, and about 4.5 million Texans have a condition that could make them uninsurable without the ACA’s protections.

As a result, Republicans in races across the state are trying to wipe away their records with seemingly empty promises. Houston Republican John Culberson has staunchly opposed the ACA but said in his campaign that he also supports pre-existing condition protections. He quietly deleted mention of the ACA from his website, where he previously boasted about his many repeal votes, according to ThinkProgress.

...Asked how Cruz plans to protect patients with pre-existing conditions and how he squares this alleged support with his votes against the ACA, his office replied with a statement that didn’t mention pre-existing conditions or an alternative to the ACA. “Texans want more healthcare freedom and choice, not skyrocketing premiums, narrowing networks, and a one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare determined by Washington bureaucrats,” a spokesperson wrote.

In response to Observer questions, Sessions, noting that his son has Down syndrome, pointed to a nonbinding resolution he introduced in September saying that any health care plan should preserve pre-existing condition protections. Sessions also pointed to his bill introduced in 2016 and 2017, dubbed the “World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan,” which would preserve some protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, but eliminate the ACA’s individual and employer insurance mandates. It didn’t get a vote.

“Americans deserve a healthcare system where they have choices in insurance, where vulnerable patients are protected, and where tax credits help Americans afford coverage,” Sessions wrote in an email. That system, he said, is definitely not the ACA’s “one-size fits all mandate,” or Medicare for All. “States should have the latitude to tailor their healthcare system to achieve these ends.” Asked if he supports Paxton’s lawsuit, Sessions didn’t respond.

Clear enough for challengers running against incumbents to respond to. That tweet from Mike Siegel above is how keeps hammering how to TX-10 voters that his opponent, Michael McCaul has voted dozens of times to take away their healthcare and to end protections for preexisting conditions. But what do candidates who are running against all those Republican replacements for GOP congressmen who decided to retire this year. Let's take Randy Bryce in Wisconsin who started running against Paul Ryan, scared the hell out of him and saw Ryan announce his retirement and then replaced himself with a goofy copy of himself-- but with no voting record. This is an ad Bryce has up on the air right now. Steil doesn't have a voting record, but he's too weak and too frightened to differentiate himself from Paul Ryan and Donald Trump:



This week, Bryce was endorsed by Milwaukee's biggest weekly newspaper, the Shepherd Express. The editorial board "throughout the campaign, Bryce has fought for the little guy, stood up to the wealthy special interests and shown the spirit of independence and forward thinking that used to set Wisconsin apart as a leader in our nation on civil rights, worker representation and advocating for the middle class. We strongly endorse sending Bryce to Congress to shake up the millionaires’ club that currently has a stranglehold on Congress." Nor are they thrilled with his overly-entitled and spoiled opponent:

With House Speaker Paul Ryan retiring, the First Congressional District has a timely opportunity to reject the divisive, hate-fueled politics of the Republican majority in both Congress and the White House. Time and time again, Ryan has timidly enabled Trump and fought to take health care away from millions of people, embarrassing and betraying Wisconsin. Furthermore, the last thing Congress needs is some like Bryce’s opponent.

Bryan Steil got the Republican nomination because of his father’s connections as a prominent Republican lawyer who served as Tommy Thompson’s personal lawyer and whose law firm benefitted from millions of dollars from a massive tobacco settlement. These connections also got him a position as a staffer for Paul Ryan. Now Steil is running to replace him.

By contrast, iron worker Randy Bryce-- or, as voters have come to know him, “Iron ’Stache”-- is true Wisconsin. Like most of us in the Badger State, he didn’t have a father to open all the important doors for him. Bryce had to do it all on his own and learn from his mistakes-- and he did make mistakes. Having learned and grown, he now offers a new and dramatically under-represented voice of the blue-collar worker in a Congress largely composed of wealthy lawyers such as his opponent.

This morning the NY Times' healthcare expert, Margot Sanger-Katz, laid bare the GOP Big Lie on pre-existing conditions. Needless to say the biggest liar of all turns out to be Trumpanzee. She wrote that "In campaign speeches, advertisements and interviews, Republican politicians are showing a zeal for protecting Americans with pre-existing health conditions" and that the fake president Trumpanzee "has gone the furthest, saying not only that he will ensure protections for the previously ill, but also pledging that his party will do so more effectively than Democrats. There are many reasons to doubt these words." Yes, many. For example, "It is Democrats, by passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, who introduced meaningful protections for Americans with prior illnesses. And Republican officeholders have taken numerous actions that would tend to weaken those protections-- in Congress, in states and in courts. The Trump administration introduced a sweeping new policy just last week that would allow states to sidestep Obamacare’s requirement to cover pre-existing conditions."

Last year, Republicans in Congress led an extended but ultimately unsuccessful effort to, in their words, “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Although a bill passed through the House of Representatives, Republicans in the Senate were unable to agree on a particular replacement for Obamacare.

The House bill, called the American Health Care Act, had provisions that would have weakened current protections for people with pre-existing illnesses. It would have allowed states to eliminate Obamacare’s rules that health insurance must cover a standard set of benefits, like prescription drugs and mental health care, and its rule that insurance companies must charge the same prices to customers whether they are healthy or sick.

The House bill created a small pool of money for states to help sick customers who might be shut out of such markets. A majority of House Republicans (217 to 20) voted for this bill.

Had this bill become law, the precise results would have depended on the choices by individual states. But the Congressional Budget Office estimated that nearly half of all Americans lived in a state that would have pursued such a waiver from standard benefits. The consequences, the C.B.O. said, would have been coverage that was unaffordable to many with pre-existing illnesses, along with holes in coverage for many serious conditions. For example, someone with a substance-abuse disorder might have lived where plans for people with that condition were very expensive and didn’t include addiction treatment.

...Trump has said he continues to back repeal efforts. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said recently that Congress would consider such legislation if Republicans retained their control after the election.