BY PETER SULLIVAN - 09/04/18
07:58 PM EDT 282
The midterm fight over
pre-existing conditions will be in the spotlight Wednesday when a federal court
hears arguments in a lawsuit against ObamaCare.
Twenty Republican-led
states are supporting the lawsuit, which calls for all of ObamaCare to be
overturned as unconstitutional. The Trump administration is supporting the
states in court, arguing specifically that the sections of the law protecting
people with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage or charged more
should be overturned.
But Democrats have
made the case an issue in the midterm elections, blasting Republicans over the
lawsuit and warning that it threatens to abolish popular protections for
pre-existing conditions.
A federal district
judge in Texas will hear arguments in the case on Wednesday, and a ruling
before November could send shockwaves through the midterms.
“There’s no good
time for Republicans to be arguing to make coverage for pre-existing conditions
unconstitutional, but doing so in September will guarantee that this will be
fresh in voters’ minds as we enter the pivotal campaign season,” said David
Bergstein, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).
Democrats in tough
races have already made the lawsuit a major issue.
A Democratic PAC is
running an ad hitting Missouri GOP Senate candidate Josh Hawley, currently the
state’s attorney general, for backing the lawsuit. Hawley is in a closely
watched race to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
“Attorney General Josh
Hawley went to court, and it could take away my health care,” says a woman in
the ad.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.)
is also using the issue in ads against his opponent, West Virginia Attorney
General Patrick Morrisey (R), who supports the lawsuit.
Democrats say voters
can expect to see more ads like that in the run up to November. A DSCC aide
said they will be making a “major push” to highlight the lawsuit around
Wednesday’s oral arguments.
Democrats also plan to
link the case to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court, arguing
that he would put ObamaCare at risk if he got to rule on the Texas case.
The issue has put many
Republicans in a difficult spot.
ObamaCare’s protections
for people with pre-existing conditions are popular, polls show. A Kaiser
Family Foundation poll in June found that 76 percent of respondents said it was
“very important” to maintain the law’s protection against people with
pre-existing conditions being denied coverage.
In a sign of GOP
concerns about the issue, 10 Republicans senators in August introduced a bill
to enshrine into law ObamaCare’s ban on people with pre-existing conditions
being denied coverage or being charged more, in case their party’s lawsuit
succeeds.
Asked if the bill was
a sign that Democrats have an effective political argument against the lawsuit,
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.),
one of the sponsors of the new GOP bill, told reporters, “In case it might be,
we want to make one back.”
Alexander said
Democrats were wrong to warn that pre-existing condition protections could go
away.
“I want to make sure
the American people know that the guarantee of coverage for pre-existing
conditions is not going to change,” he said. “It’s the law today, it’ll be the
law tomorrow, it will be the law five years from now.”
Highlighting the
tricky political terrain over the Republican lawsuit, Florida Gov. Rick Scott
(R), who is running for Senate in a closely watched race this year, declined to
take a position on the lawsuit.
While Florida is a
backer of the lawsuit, Scott told reporters in Washington on Friday that he did
not make that decision.
“That’s a decision of
the attorney general,” Scott said. “From my standpoint, I want to make sure
that you can get health-care insurance. If you have a pre-existing condition,
you still have to be able to get health care, and you ought to be able to stay
on your parents’ plan.”
Pressed again for his
stance on the lawsuit, Scott said, “That’s a separate ... my office is not involved
in that.”
Other GOP candidates
are also walking a fine line.
Several Republican
Senate candidates say they do support the lawsuit, but also want to maintain
protections for pre-existing conditions.
“I think we need to
cover preexisting AND get rid of Obamacare,” Hawley told the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch in July.
However, restoring
protections for pre-existing conditions if ObamaCare were struck down would
require lawmakers to come together to pass replacement legislation, something
they have been unable to do.
Leslie Dach, the
campaign chair of the pro-ObamaCare group Protect Our Care, dismissed the bill
as part of “desperate efforts by Republicans to cover their tracks” on
pre-existing conditions.
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