With Health Care and Pre-existing Conditions Protections Called “Top Issues” by Texas Voters, Trump Joins GOP Candidates in Shamefully Trying to Hide their Repeal-and-Sabotage Record from View During Debates, Rallies
Houston, TX – Tonight President Donald Trump, the Repealer-in-Chief turned self-professed pre-existing conditions defender, stumps for Texas politicians who once bragged about working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its protections for pre-existing conditions but are now trying to erase their repeal-and-sabotage record from memory, while health care champion Lizzie Fletcher and pro-repeal Republican John Culberson hold their first public debate. In response, Texans are telling their stories about how important maintaining protections for pre-existing conditions are to them. Ahead of the Fletcher-Culberson debate tonight, patients, providers and health care advocates in the Protect Our Care-Texas coalition will be speaking out against the Republican war on health care.
Despite recent, empty promises and meaningless, “nonbinding” PR stunts to position themselves as protectors of people with pre-existing conditions, Ted Cruz, Pete Sessions and John Culberson and other Texas Republicans have worked for years to dismantle protections for pre-existing conditions. Recent polling by PPP for Protect Our Care shows nearly two-thirds of Texas voters statewide and in key House battlegrounds want to see protections for pre-existing conditions maintained in the law and nearly six in 10 are concerned about the consequences of GOP repeal efforts.
Here’s one Texan’s story about why Texas Republicans’ repeal-and-sabotage crusade is so personal:
“I’ve been living with my transplanted kidney for six years now. Thanks to the protections of pre-existing conditions rules in the Affordable Care Act, I am able to get insurance that allows me to get checkups that I need to make sure my kidney is doing well,” said Marc Pouhé, a Texan living with IgA nephropathy. “I’m able to get the medication that I need, daily, to keep me from rejecting the kidney — medication that would be thousands of dollars without the insurance that I have. So it’s gravely important that these protections stay in place.”
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
Ted Cruz’s Years-Long Campaign to Gut Pre-existing Conditions Protections for 11.5 Million Texans:
Cruz’s First Piece Of Legislation Was To “Fully Repeal Obamacare.” [Cruz.Senate.Gov, accessed 9/21/18]
2013: Cruz Led The Republican Government Shut Down Over ACA Implementation. [Vox, 1/22/18]
2015: Cruz Voted To Repeal Most Of The ACA. [HR 3762, Roll Call Vote #114, 12/3/15]
2017: Cruz Voted For The Senate “Repeal And Delay” Plan. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #169, 7/26/17]
2017: Cruz Voted For The Better Care Reconciliation Act.
2017: Cruz Voted For “Skinny Repeal” Of The ACA. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #179, 7/28/17]
2018: Ted Cruz: “We Need To Finish The Job” On Obamacare. “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Wednesday said Republicans needed to ‘finish the job” on repealing and replacing Obamacare in 2018, and he is pushing his colleagues to use one last reconciliation bill before the midterms to deliver on their long-running promise.” [Washington Examiner, 1/24/18]
Ted Cruz Said It Was “Reasonable” for GOP to Argue ACA’s Preexisting Conditions Rules Are Now Unconstitutional. “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as vociferous an Obamacare critic as you’ll find, sounds on board with the latest legal challenge to the health care law that could lead to protections for people with preexisting conditions being found unconstitutional. Cruz told Vox that he thought the Justice Department’s position in the lawsuit, that the law’s rules on preexisting conditions should be invalidated along with the individual mandate, was ‘reasonable’ and defended the foundation of the case being brought by his home state of Texas in a brief interview at the Capitol.” [Vox, 6/15/18]
John Culberson’s Years-Long Campaign to Gut Pre-existing Conditions Protections for 11.5 Million Texans:
2011: Culberson Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. [HR 2, Roll Call Vote #14, 1/19/11]
2011: Culberson Voted To Repeal And Defund The ACA.[HCR 34, Roll Call Vote #277, 4/15/11]
2013: Culberson Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. [HR 45, Roll Call Vote #154, 5/16/13]
2015: Culberson Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. Culberson voted for HR 596, an act “to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.” The bill also ordered House committees to develop a replacement that would “provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage,” but provided no specifics. [HR 596, Roll Call Vote #58, 2/3/15]
2017: Culberson Voted For AHCA, which would have gutted pre-existing conditions protections. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #256, 5/4/17]
Pete Sessions’s Years-Long Campaign to Gut Pre-existing Conditions Protections for 11.5 Million Texans:
Sessions has bragged that he has “voted more than 60 times to repeal, dismantle, and defund ObamaCare.” This includes:
2011: Sessions Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. [HR 2, Roll Call Vote #14, 1/19/11]
2011: Sessions Voted To Repeal And Defund The ACA. [HCR 34, Roll Call Vote #277, 4/15/11]
2013: Sessions Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. [HR 45, Roll Call Vote #154, 5/16/13]
2015: Sessions Voted For A Total Repeal Of The ACA. Sessions voted for HR 596, an act “to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.” The bill also ordered House committees to develop a replacement that would “provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage,” but provided no specifics. [HR 596, Roll Call Vote #58, 2/3/15]
2017: Sessions Voted For AHCA, which would have gutted pre-existing conditions protections. [HR 1628, Roll Call Vote #256, 5/4/17]