Senate panel hears from Obamacare supporters
WASHINGTON — Pennsylvanians are better off under the Affordable Care Act, state insurance commissioner Teresa Miller said, pushing back forcefully against Republican claims that the country’s health care system is in a death spiral.
The Republican health care plan that recently passed the U.S. House would harm low- and middle-income Pennsylvanians, Ms. Miller told lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing convened by Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
Other witnesses included an Indiana mother who relies on Medicaid to pay for her disabled daughter’s care, a Maryland woman whose multiple sclerosis went untreated until she was able to get coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, and a laid-off Virginia man who was able to get coverage on an insurance exchange despite his wife’s severe multiple sclerosis and his lymphoma, which is now in remission.
At least two senators became teary during their testimony.
The panel was preaching to a choir of Democrats who want to fix rather than replace President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy.
Their stories sharply contrasted with the ones President Donald Trump heard during a recent “listening session” at the White House. Americans from around the country described premiums that keep rising and deductibles so high it’s like they don’t have insurance at all.
Ms. Miller said there are people the system isn’t working for — those who don’t have employer-provided plans and who earn too much to qualify for tax credits.
In Pennsylvania, that’s about 1 percent or 2 percent of people, she said.
“The ACA isn’t perfect. But instead of targeting what plans cover or granting age-based tax credits in place of need-based subsidies, we need to talk about common-sense strategies that can stabilize markets,” she testified.
The Republican plan won’t do that, she said.
The Affordable Care Act is working well for most people, she said.
About 6.4 percent of Pennsylvanians are uninsured now, down from 10 percent before the ACA. And three-fourths of people in the individual market have found good coverage for less than $100 per month, she said.
“We cannot return to a place where people are forced to accept less coverage at an increased cost, and to make tough choices between their finances or their health,” she said.
Republicans say they have a better plan: The American Health Care Act, which passed the House last week but faces an overhaul in the Senate.
The bill does away with coverage mandates, transforms need-based subsidies to age-based tax credits, allows insurers to charge older people more and allows states to apply to waive requirements for coverage of benefits such as mental health treatment and preexisting conditions, cuts funding from Medicaid, subsidizes high-risk pools, provides tax breaks to insurers and the wealthy, encourages the use of health savings accounts, allows penalties for coverage lapses, and ends federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
Panelists on Wednesday said they want to keep the Affordable Care Act, which has made it easier for them to obtain coverage for treatments they credit with greatly improving their quality of life.
“The Medicaid expansion is working,” said Carol Fisher Hardaway, who moved to Maryland after her home state of Texas rejected the Medicaid expansion that she now relies on to cover treatment for multiple sclerosis.
Michael Dunkley of Virginia said his eligibility to buy gap coverage after a layoff was running out in 2013 — just as he was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma.
Luckily, he said, the ACA was about to take effect. When it did, he was able to buy insurance for $575 a month — $300 less than he had been paying.
“I couldn’t be declined for a pre-existing condition, and I was in the middle of chemo with massive cancer everywhere,” he said. Before the ACA companies “wouldn’t have given me a policy or I would have had to come up with cash to pay for procedures — $35,000 here, $50,000 there.”
U.S. Sens. Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Kaine, DVa., choked up listening to some of the panelists’ stories.
“I can’t listen to you without hurting, just listening to what you endure,” Mr. Booker said. “Don’t tell me the nation that can send human beings to the moon, that can map the human genome, that can have the largest military force known to humanity can’t design a health care system that can protect the most vulnerable of its citizens.”