Senators scramble to improve health bill
WASHINGTON — As Senate Republicans scramble to resuscitate their health-care bill, the war over how to proceed with replacing Obamacare is becoming increasingly fractious.
Protesters moved from Senate office to Senate office Wednesday, visiting Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and other Republicans who they want to vote against the Senate bill. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, while meeting with members of the world champion Chicago Cubs, promised a “big surprise” with “a great health-care package.”
In a conference call with reporters, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D–Ohio, said it will be helpful for GOP senators to go back to their districts during the July 4 recess to get a “public opinion bath.” Brown’s key concerns about the Senate bill are cuts to Medicaid and the prospect of ultimately turning the program into a block grant program.
“If somebody has cancer, you don’t take away their insurance and give them a federal grant,” he said, adding it’s “repugnant” that senators with insurance “would take away insurance from people who are struggling.”
Vice President Mike Pence flew to Ohio to make the case for a bill to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The vice president’s trip took place one day after Trump met with Portman and virtually every other Senate Republican.
“It was a good meeting, a very honest exchange,” Portman said of the White House meeting.
In a conference call with reporters, Portman said the federal and state marketplaces that sell federally subsidized individual insurance plans are in serious trouble and lawmakers would have had to craft solutions even if Democrat Hillary Clinton had won last year’s presidential election.
“There is a sense … we should try and figure out how to resolve our differences because we owe it to the American people,” Portman said.
Senate Republicans have delayed a vote until next month on a bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R–Ky. Like a version passed last month by the House, the bill aims to dismantle large sections of Obamacare.
President Barack Obama’s signature program extended health-care coverage to millions of Americans through federally subsidized individual insurance plans and expanded eligibility to Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that provides health care to low-income people.
Gov. John Kasich used the expanded Medicaid program to provide coverage to nearly 700,000 low-income Ohioans.
During a visit Monday to the White House, Melissa Ackison of Union County relayed her nightmarish experience with the 2010 law.
She and her husband, David “Rich” Ackison, are small-business owners and the parents of four. They signed up for a co-op through Ohio-based InHealth under Obamacare, only to have InHealth declare bankruptcy. The family was placed on a plan with higher deductibles and higher premiums.
The insurance, she said, was expensive, covered relatively few health problems and was frequently canceled by mistake. The resulting medical bills ruined the family’s credit. Ackison, who runs a survey company with her husband, has had to use her 401(k) fund to pay medical bills.
Complicating matters is the fact that Ackison has a rare bone disease and one of her sons has a pre–existing condition that requires physical and occupational therapy. Her problems with her exchange plan, she said, were myriad — everything from being challenged on her U.S. citizenship (they are citizens) to having the government misplace her documents.
At one point, she was informed that her son’s insurance couldn’t be reactivated without his driver’s license. Her son was 6 at the time. At another point, she was told her personal information had been “compromised,” sending Ackison on a panicked investigation into whether her identity had been stolen.
In October, she had a baby, Cross. Ackison went home for a day, only to be readmitted for a stroke. The stroke, she said, wasn’t covered — it was not considered an emergency according to her insurance plan. And when, a month later, her now-8-year-old began having frequent fevers, Ackison rolled quarters in her living room to pay for his prescriptions.
Now, the family is covered by Medicaid, which she said they have no business being in. Still, she said grudgingly, it covers far more than her exchange plan ever did.
“Medicaid should be for the most vulnerable population,” she said. “Not us … each day that passes is another day families like mine are on Medicaid and we shouldn’t be.”
A poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University shows that 56 percent of American voters disapprove of the Republican health-care alternatives while only 16 percent favor it.