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ACA Sabotage, Scare Tactics: House Members Scrap Over Law’s Future

While Democrats charged the Trump administration with doubling down on its “sabotage” of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republicans accused Democrats of using “scare tactics” to mislead U.S. voters.

During a House Ways & Means Committee hearing Tuesday, Chairman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) called out the GOP’s “continued unconscionable sabotage” of the ACA, especially its protections for people with preexisting conditions, by leveraging the Supreme Court.

“The administration is in court right now, demanding to destroy the ACA [and] to remove healthcare programs and protections for millions during a pandemic,” he said, adding this was only after the Republicans voted multiple times to demolish the statute. There have been at least 70 GOP-led attempts to repeal or modify the ACA since its became law in 2010.

On November 10, the Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in California v. Texas (formerly Texas v. Azar), a lawsuit that has the potential to wipe out the ACA.

That would be devastating during a pandemic, agreed Andy Slavitt, board chair for the non-profit United States of Care, and former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services director under the Obama administration.

Eliminating the ACA may discourage people from disclosing a COVID-19 diagnosis, he explained. In addition, “no one knows what COVID-19 brings in terms of conditions that will come from it … And so it is a blanket pass to insurance companies to say, ‘I don’t want to cover you again,'” he stated. “Imagine trying to contact trace or [get] people to agree to testing. We would be in even worse shape than we are today.”

The case before the Supreme Court centers around the question of “severability” and whether the remainder of the law can still stand after removal of the individual mandate penalty.

Pascrell also cited other destructive efforts by the administration, such as green-lighting “scam junk plans without any protections” in reference to short-term limited duration plans; imposing “a gag rule to prevent women from having access to reproductive healthcare”; and gutting “funding for navigators and assisters.”

Ranking member Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) argued that “A lot of this rhetoric seems designed to scare the American people in advance of an election.”

Kelly addressed the claim of sabotage, by stating “if that’s the truth, this is the worst sabotage the world has ever seen … Insurance premiums are down, coverage choices are up, and enrollment is stable.” (Recent reports examining data prior to the pandemic have shown upticks in both uninsured adults and children.)

Moreover, he argued that the Trump administration helped create options for people who couldn’t afford, or didn’t want, ACA coverage plans. He touted the “restoration of short-term health plans,” and investments in health reimbursement accounts, as options that the GOP has given people in order to choose the best plan for them. He also said that eliminating the individual mandate penalty saved low and middle-income U.S. taxpayers a minimum of $695 a year.

As for the pending lawsuit, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, MD, (R-Ohio) claimed “the preexisting component of the ACA was not something that we [Republicans] were against. We stand with patients with preexisting conditions. We continue to ensure that those protections become the law of the land and remain the law of the land.”

He said there’s a difference between “challenging the existence of the ACA versus the constitutionality of a component of it.”

But Wenstrup also criticized the law, saying the ACA “did not give people choices” while Republican-led reforms, and “hopefully in the future better association plans,” did.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) fired back that GOP reassurances on preexisting conditions were just “lip service.” She asked Slavitt if President Trump’s recent executive order on preexisting conditions would actually protect vulnerable patients.

If a patient were to print out that order to claim a protection, “the insurance company would laugh at them,” Slavitt said.

Rep. Tim Kelly (D-Mich.) asked what would happen to people with preexisting conditions if the ACA were overturned. His wife has multiple sclerosis and his daughter has diabetes, Kelly noted.

Slavitt explained that, if the ACA were eliminated, insurance companies would no longer be required to cover preexisting condition.

“They may cover them, but they may say ‘Your asthma, or your cancer, or your mental health condition, or your heart arrhythmia is excluded,'” he said. “Or they may say, ‘You can have those things, but we’re going to charge you an unlimited amount of money more.'”

Last Updated October 21, 2020

  • Shannon Firth has been reporting on health policy as MedPage Today’s Washington correspondent since 2014. She is also a member of the site’s Enterprise & Investigative Reporting team. Follow

Source: MedicalNewsToday.com