SEEKING COMPROMISE

State, local officials slam GOP health care act, call for keeping, repairing Obamacare

As Republicans in Washington scrambled Thursday afternoon to collect votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, state and local officials here — Democrats all — laid out a sobering scenario if those repeal efforts should succeed.

Since the ACA became law in 2010, said Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller, the uninsured rate among Pennsylvanians has dropped from 10.2 percent to a record low 6.4 percent. Between the expansion of Medicaid and the individual marketplace plan offerings, 1.1 million state residents now have health coverage.

Locally, that has meant 350,000 Allegheny County residents have gained coverage because of the Affordable Care Act, said county Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Meanwhile the Republicans’ American Health Care Act now under consideration, Ms. Miller said, “will only help the healthy and wealthy” while others would see their deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs rise and their plan coverage narrow.

The discussion at the John G. Rangos Sr. Conference Center at Children’s Hospital in Lawrenceville included members of Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, local elected officials, medical professionals and families that have benefited from the ACA.

State Department of Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas arrived at Thursday’s gathering on crutches after his sprained left ankle flared up Thursday morning, landing him in the UPMC Presbyterian emergency room.

As he waited to be seen by a clinician, he said, “The one thing that never crossed my mind was, ‘Can I afford this?’ The state gives me good health insurance and the only thing I had to focus on is getting better.”

Others in that waiting room were not so fortunate, he said. Cutting back on Medicaid “is a cruel thing to do,” he said, and a change that could carry a $3 billion price tag for the state under the new AHCA’s plan to switch to block grant funding for medical assistance.

Ms. Miller said the Republican plan fails to appreciate the interdependence of three key ACA components: eliminating coverage denials because of a SEE ACA, PAGE B-2

Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette Five-year-old Max yawns Thursday while sitting on the lap of his mother, Casey Dye of Monroeville, during a press conference in the Rangos Conference Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC in Lawrenceville. At right is a photo of Max’s...

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller talks about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act and the flaws of the proposed GOP health care plan Thursday at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.