Get the Facts At CoryGardnerWontProtectPreexistingConditions.com
Senator Cory Gardner is on TV lying to Coloradans about his record of trying to rip away health care coverage for people with pre-existing conditions — even in the middle of a pandemic.
Here’s what Coloradans and experts are saying about Gardner’s shameless political stunt:
Cancer survivor Laura Packard: “Your bill is a sham and you know it. I’m a stage four cancer survivor & you have voted again and again to strip health care from me and hundreds of thousands of Coloradans like me. Now you’re trying to cover up your own record.”
Rachel Wall, Coloradan with a pre-existing condition: Gardner “is using what has defined my life — having a pre-existing condition — he is just using this term meaninglessly to him, just to protect himself and to try to get reelected.”
Colorado Consumer Health Initiative: “So, after voting countless times against pre-existing condition protections and experts like us resoundingly saying your bill does not protect people with pre-ex, you put this out there? Really?”
Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt: “Gardner’s bill ‘contains a giant loophole’ because insurance companies can simply ‘deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions.’”
Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute scholar: “This is a flat out lie.”
Edgewater City Councilmember Michal Rosenoer: “2.4 Million Coloradans have pre-existing conditions & in the middle of a public health and economic crisis, @SenCoryGardner is STILL trying to rip apart the Affordable Care Act. He’s voted 13 times to weaken our healthcare – there’s no running from that record.”
Third Way policy expert Jim Kessler: “Cory Gardner voted to kill pre-existing conditions about 55 times. His ad – a blatant lie – says otherwise. When you are sprinting like a greyhound from your own record you are in deep doo-doo.”
Health care policy expert Billy Wynne: “Insurers, under his bill, would not be required to give you insurance… in the first place.”
Health care analyst Charles Gaba: “This is disgusting, bald-faced gaslighting… [Gardner’s] bill would cause premiums for individual market insurance policies to become INSANELY unaffordable, since it includes no financial subsidies or price-gouging protection *and* it does nothing to keep or replace the #ACA’s Medicaid expansion provision.”
Senator Michael Bennet: “To protect Coloradans w/ pre-existing conditions, we must build on the ACA—not tear it down. That starts with blocking the GOP lawsuit. @Hickenlooper is the only one with a record of protecting the ACA & will fight for those w/ pre-existing conditions. We need him in the Senate.”
Meanwhile, NBC News reports that Gardner “didn’t respond when asked if Gardner still favors ACA repeal, or why his bill doesn’t include the guaranteed issue provision” and his spokesperson “wouldn’t say whether Gardner supports a lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to invalidate the ACA.”
In case you missed it:
NBC News: Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions
WASHINGTON — Republican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions.
The latest example came Tuesday when Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who has voted repeatedly to repeal the Obamacare law that established those federal protections, released an emotional ad in which he sits with his mother and discusses her successful battle with cancer.
“Cory wrote the bill to guarantee coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — forever,” she says, looking directly at the camera.
“No matter what happens to Obamacare,” the senator adds.
But experts say the bill he cites doesn’t do that.
Gardner is one of several Republicans to obscure their record on pre-existing conditions as rising public support for Obamacare turns the issue into a liability for senators who have voted to repeal it.
…
Gardner’s 117-word-long legislation would require insurers “not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion” or “factor health status into premiums or charges.” The bill was introduced in August and has never received a hearing or a vote.
Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said Gardner’s bill “contains a giant loophole” because insurance companies can simply “deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions.”
The current rules, created through the Affordable Care Act, include “guaranteed issue,” meaning insurance companies have to sell policies to people regardless of health status, Levitt said in an email.
“The Gardner bill leaves out that requirement, meaning that insurers could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, as they commonly did in the individual insurance market before the ACA,” he said.
Gardner campaign spokesman Meghan Graf didn’t respond when asked if Gardner still favors ACA repeal, or why his bill doesn’t include the guaranteed issue provision. She wouldn’t say whether Gardner supports a lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to invalidate the ACA.
