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GOP alarmed Obamacare attacks could cost them the House

Greenbeard

Greenbeard

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Dozens and dozens and dozens of GOP votes since 2011 to bring back pre-existing conditions. They spent almost all of last year doing it and were one McCain thumb away from succeeding. Now they're in court trying to get pre-existing condition protections tossed and Trump is doing his damndest to use the regulatory apparatus to make life harder for those with pre-existing conditions.

And GOP candidate after candidate is lying about this very obvious and public record. Repealing pre-existing conditions protections has been the GOP's signature--arguably, only--policy position for the past decade. And now they backpedal.

GOP alarmed Obamacare attacks could cost them the House
For weeks, vulnerable Rep. Glenn Grothman had been getting pummeled by his Democratic opponent for voting to curb protections for people with pre-existing conditions — most recently with an attack ad depicting a little boy with an oxygen mask over his face gasping for air.

So on a conference call with GOP leaders last week, Grothman pleaded with party leaders to invest in a nationwide TV ad that could run in competitive districts like his, defending the House GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill that passed the chamber last year, according to three sources on the call.

You’re on your own, was the response. It would be too expensive, Republican leaders told Grothman.

House Republicans are increasingly worried that Democrats’ attacks on their votes to repeal and replace Obamacare could cost them the House. While the legislation stalled in the Senate, it’s become a toxic issue on the campaign trail for the House Republicans who backed it.

Toxic and ubiquitous: Democrats have maintained an almost single-minded focus on health care in their campaign messaging. More than 54 percent of pro-Democratic campaign ads in federal races mentioning the issue between mid-September and mid-October, according to a recent study by Wesleyan University’s Media Project.

Data provided by Advertising Analytics shows that Democratic candidates and left-leaning outside groups have spent $90.3 million on health care ads this cycle. That's 43 percent of the total $209.1 million they’ve spent on TV ads.
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Good on the Dems. Tie the GOP's toxic position around its neck.
 
Absolutely - only common sense actuarial risk factors favored by demorats, like age and tobacco use, can be used to raise individual premium prices by 300%, not those evil pre-existing conditions, like obesity or drug/alcohol abuse, that republicants would allow.
 
They just figured this out, now?
 
So many bogus ads out there these days from those fighting to gut pre-existing condition protections.

 
ttwtt78640 said:
Absolutely - only common sense actuarial risk factors favored by demorats, like age and tobacco use, can be used to raise individual premium prices by 300%, not those evil pre-existing conditions, like obesity or drug/alcohol abuse, that republicants would allow.
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The issue is not about premium prices, but about whether the insurance company is allowed to deny you coverage based on preexisting conditions, or (more insidiously) give you the illusion you're covered, and then (after you've paid premiums for a while) send you a letter saying that because you didn't disclose a preexisting condition (like acne) they won't pay for your cancer treatments.
 
Hopefully their fear is well founded. If people actually believe this nonsense about republicans suddenly being the supporters of social programs and protecting pre-existing conditions, and democrats as the destroyers of those things, we will be completely screwed as a society.
 
MrPeanut said:
Hopefully their fear is well founded. If people actually believe this nonsense about republicans suddenly being the supporters of social programs and protecting pre-existing conditions, and democrats as the destroyers of those things, we will be completely screwed as a society.
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It's surreal watching these nihilists on the campaign trail.

Every GOP member of Congress voted against protecting people with pre-existing conditions--they boasted about it for years! "Not a single Republican vote," they beamed.

Then, having failed at preventing those protections from being put into place, they all spent years voting to repeal them at every opportunity. "Root and branch," they vowed.

Now they're in court trying to get them thrown out and their fearless leader is doing his best to gut the protections administratively.

And despite all of their actions, past and present, they're running on protecting those with pre-existing conditions. There's no bottom to that party.
 
ashurbanipal said:
The issue is not about premium prices, but about whether the insurance company is allowed to deny you coverage based on preexisting conditions, or (more insidiously) give you the illusion you're covered, and then (after you've paid premiums for a while) send you a letter saying that because you didn't disclose a preexisting condition (like acne) they won't pay for your cancer treatments.
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To assert that PPACA, UHC or any other health care 'reform' is not about current premium prices (care costs) is pure BS. Why, exactly, are age and tobacco use allowed as premium 'price multipliers' kept but obesity is illegal to use to increase premium prices? Folks were denied coverage because their actuarial risk exceeded what insurance companies were allowed to charge.

You are denied "access to" any car (or home) that you can't afford to make payments on yet having the government set a price limit such that the most expensive car (or home) cannot exceed the least expensive car (or home) by more than X% would not be acceptable as a way to 'control costs' or improve "access to" cars (or homes).
 
Yep, Obama said people wouldn't be fooled into thinking republicans were for the Affordable Care Act now. He was out campaigning for democrats.
 
Rosie1 said:
Yep, Obama said people wouldn't be fooled into thinking republicans were for the Affordable Care Act now. He was out campaigning for democrats.
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Despite this Orwellian BS the GOP is trying to pull, they were so open and proud about it for years (until a few months ago), so prominent in their disdain for these protections it's a little hard to fool anyone other than the diehards at this point.

The first vote they took after taking Congress in 2011 was to throw out those protections for people with pre-existing conditions and replace them with nothing. The very first vote! The most pressing issue for our society, the most urgent item facing the nation, the very top of their agenda: getting rid of these protections.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
To assert that PPACA, UHC or any other health care 'reform' is not about current premium prices (care costs) is pure BS.
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Sure. I asserted no such thing. The issue I was writing about is a part of health care reform, and in that part, the problem was that insurance companies were refusing to cover some people, or alternately, saying they were covering them and accepting payments from them, but then when it came time to pay out, they were sending researchers out to find ways (like unreported minor pre-existing conditions, e.g. acne) to not have to pay. Obviously, if we want to achieve the goal of making sure all our citizens have access to health care, those are behaviors on the part of insurance companies that should not be allowed to continue.

ttwtt78640 said:
Why, exactly, are age and tobacco use allowed as premium 'price multipliers' kept but obesity is illegal to use to increase premium prices?
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I'm not sure. Presumably that was something hammered out in conjunction with the insurance company reps who were essentially allowed to write the law. I'd agree it makes little sense.

ttwtt78640 said:
Folks were denied coverage because their actuarial risk exceeded what insurance companies were allowed to charge.
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Yes, true. That's a consequence of having an essentially capitalist approach to health care, and an argument for why we shouldn't.

ttwtt78640 said:
You are denied "access to" any car (or home) that you can't afford to make payments on yet having the government set a price limit such that the most expensive car (or home) cannot exceed the least expensive car (or home) by more than X% would not be acceptable as a way to 'control costs' or improve "access to" cars (or homes).
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Why not?
 
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