Health care key issue in races
Democrats go on attack over GOP votes against Obamacare
WASHINGTON — With a week left in one of the most consequential U.S. House races in the nation, Democrats are going all in on health care to defeat Houston Republican John Culberson, a longtime critic of the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.”
A new ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the political arm of the House Democrats, takes aim at Culberson's many votes against the Obama-era health care system, including its popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Culberson, like other Republicans in Texas and across the nation, has sought to emphasize his support for pre-existing conditions protections in other ways — none of which have passed so far in the GOP-led Congress.
Amid a thicket of competing Republican replacement proposals, Democrats in close races have gone on the attack, using the health care issue as their closing argument in next Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Obamacare’s protections also have popped up in another competitive House race in San Antonio, where Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones blames second-term U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, the Republican she hopes to unseat, for GOP efforts to repeal the health care law.
Hurd, however, was one of 20 Republicans who defected from his party at a pivotal moment last year when the House voted by a narrow margin to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The issue could prove particularly potent in Culberson’s race against Democratic challenger Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, who appears to have pulled nearly even in the polls in an affluent west Houston district that has been in GOP hands since George H.W. Bush was elected its congressman in 1966.
As the 7th Congressional District has turned less white and more suburban, it is being seen around the nation as a potential bellwether of Democrats’ chances of reclaiming the House, particularly in a year when polls show increasing unease with President Donald Trump among college-educated suburban women.
Some political analysts believe that even with ramped-up Democratic turnout, Fletcher’s best chance of flipping the district lies in appealing to women voters in the Harris County suburbs — a demographic that has traditionally skewed Republican. For Fletcher, known best as a defender of Planned Parenthood, health care is part of that equation.
“We feel like our voices aren't being heard,” Fletcher, a 43-year-old Houston attorney, said in a recent CBS news interview.
Facing the toughest challenge of his nine terms in the U.S. House, Culberson has fought back in a new ad accusing Fletcher of favoring “a government takeover of health care.” The charge echoes a national GOP counterattack led by the White House accusing Democrats of pushing an Americanized version of European “socialized medicine.”
“I’s a terrible idea to have the government in between the patient and their doctor,” Culberson said in an Oct. 21 debate with Fletcher.
Like many claims in the race, the facts are in dispute.
Culberson has accused Fletcher of favoring “singlepayer” government-run health care, a charge that she says is false. Running as a moderate in a historically Republican district, Fletcher has explicitly rejected calls for single-payer system, which is sometimes dubbed “Medicare for all.”
Culberson’s television ad cites Fletcher’s statement from a Democratic runoff debate in which she expressed support for “universal health care.” But Fletcher, like many Democrats, distinguishes between the goal of covering everyone and the method of achieving that goal.
Fletcher, instead, has said she wants to find ways to improve on the Affordable Care Act. The law relies on exchanges of private insurers to raise standards and expand health coverage to millions of Americans. But Republicans note that consumers have also seen costs rise, options dwindle, and premiums skyrocket for many in the middle-class.
Democrats often cite the political uncertainty surrounding the law — coupled with GOP tax cut legislation that jettisoned penalties for not carrying insurance — as a leading driver of health insurance premium increases.
Culberson, 62, has long been a critic of the Affordable Care Act, joining the Republican Party’s persistent vow to repeal and replace the law. But faced with the prospect of losing the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, Culberson and other Republicans have been forced to redouble their efforts to find alternatives.
“The Democrats want you to believe that Obamacare is the only way to ensure protections for pre-existing conditions and it’s simply untrue,” said Culberson’s campaign spokeswoman, Catherine Kelly. “Congressman Culberson has long supported maintaining protections for preexisting conditions.”
Many of the central GOP alternatives require that people retain “continuous coverage” or seek insurance through state-based risk pools that promise coverage for people with preexisting conditions, though at uncertain and potentially steep prices.
A proposal by Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz would have allowed insurance companies to sell plans that meet the Affordable Care Act’s protections for pre-existing conditions alongside cheaper “Freedom Plans” that don’t. But many health care experts criticized the measure, saying it would segregate the market and make the “Obama care compliant” plans inordinately expensive.
Culberson has cited some of those Republican efforts, though he has remained silent about a Texas-led lawsuit backed by the Trump administration that seeks to invalidate the Affordable Care Act in its entirely, including its protections for pre-existing conditions.
“The pre-existing conditions issue plays very badly for Republicans,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston. “That is why you’re seeing people from Ted Cruz to John Culberson backtrack and say that in spite of past efforts, they're all for providing health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions.”
Meanwhile, amid stock market tumbles that have weakened the GOP's message on the economy in the closing days of the election, Democrats have found space to press their case on health care — once a winning issue for Republicans.
Culberson, seeking a tight focus on Houston, has run ads centered on his role on the Appropriations Committee securing federal emergency funds to recover from Hurricane Harvey. Having skipped Trump’s Oct. 22 rally in Houston, he has repeatedly sought to tie Fletcher to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a frequent GOP campaign target.
As an advocate of strict immigration laws, including Trump’s proposed border wall, Culberson’s latest ad also suggests that Fletcher would let “violent criminals” into the country. That claim is based on Fletcher’s remark in an early debate that “we have got to have a pathway to citizenship for everyone who is here” — a reference to the 11 or 12 million immigrants who already live in the country illegally.
Having been won narrowly by Hillary Clinton in 2016, the historically Republican district also has attracted spending from outside groups and both political parties. The new Democratic ad, launched Tuesday, takes square aim at Culberson’s Obamacare votes that a spokesman said “gut protections” for people with pre-existing conditions, signaling the party's closing theme.
Whichever attack gets the most traction could help decide whether Republicans or Democrats hold the House in the next two years of the Trump presidency.
As tensions rise, the Culberson-Fletcher matchup remains one of only a handful in Texas and a few dozen across the nation that could actually be in play on Nov. 6. The Democrats need to gain at least 23 of them to win the House.
“It’s part of a select group of districts which together will determine control of the U.S. House,” Jones said. "If Democrats can flip between two-thirds and threequarters of them, the House will flip ... Whereas if Republicans can keep Democratic gains below twothirds, then they’re likely to retain a very narrow majority.”