Democrats think preexisting conditions will once again carry them to electoral victory. Despite their own liabilities and callousness on the issue, they’re probably right.
In 2018, Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to deny health care to the sick. Exhibit A, they said, was the GOP’s attempt to repeal ObamaCare’s popular preexisting-conditions provisions. The accusation worked. Democrats flipped a net 41 House seats to take control of the chamber. Conventional wisdom considers the outcome to be proof that ObamaCare is (finally) popular with voters.
In 2020, Democrats are deploying the same strategy. A meritless yet somewhat successful Republican-led legal challenge to ObamaCare now sits before the Supreme Court. Oral arguments will occur mere days after the election and mere days after the GOP replaces the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a jurist who is unlikely to approach ObamaCare with the same reverence Ginsburg did: 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett. This confluence of events again enables Democrats to accuse Republicans of wanting to deny care to the sick by eliminating ObamaCare’s popular preexisting-conditions provisions.
There are several problems with this line of attack, however.
- Congressional Republicans didn’t try to repeal ObamaCare’s preexisting-conditions provisions.
I wish they had. But even the Congressional Budget Office acknowledged the “repeal” bill House Republicans introduced in 2017 would not have repealed those provisions:
Insurers would still be required to provide coverage to any applicant, would not be able to vary premiums to reflect enrollees’ health status or to limit coverage of preexisting medical conditions, and would be limited in how premiums could vary by age.
Nor would the Senate bill have done so. Senate Republicans could have repealed those provisions with just 51 votes, but they never even tried. The closest thing they came to repealing them was Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R‑TX) “freedom option,” which would have made those provisions optional. But Senate Republican leaders gutted that proposal, ensuring their bill would preserve those provisions.
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