Constituents Give House Republicans an Earful about the New Health-Care Bill

‘Government doesn’t belong in our health-care coverage or in our health-care decisions. . . . We don’t all fit into a one-size-fits-all plan.” So said Sheila Salter to thunderous applause on Tuesday morning as she addressed a crowd of a couple hundred at an anti-Obamacare rally sponsored by the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

Salter is one of countless Americans angry about the Affordable Care Act, legislation that has decreased the quality of health care in the U.S. and even caused many individuals and families to lose health insurance altogether. At today’s rally, the overwhelming sentiment was that congressional Republicans have failed to keep their repeated promise of repealing Obamacare.

As a result of the ACA, health-care premiums have increased on average 25 percent this year, nearly one-third of U.S. counties have only one insurer on their state’s exchange, and 34 percent fewer health-care providers accept Obamacare insurance than accept private insurance. Fed up with these conditions, about 200 people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia gathered for Tuesday’s AFP rally, “You Promised,” just blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, before they were escorted to the Hill for legislative meetings.

The rally was overwhelmingly a reaction to GOP politicians’ lack of follow-through on their promises to abolish and replace the health-care law, and during the last few election cycles nearly all congressional Republicans have made the full repeal of Obamacare a crucial aspect of their platforms. Now that the Republican party holds both chambers of Congress — though by a slim margin in the Senate — and the White House, the American people see no reason for further delay. Seven years is more than enough. “You promised.”

“These people forget us after they’re done running,” Pearl Ramsey tells me. She and 15 acquaintances traveled to the rally from southwestern Virginia, where she serves as a caregiver to about 200 senior citizens. “We felt we needed to come up here and have a voice. . . . This needs to be fixed,” she adds.

Pearl has seen firsthand how the ACA hobbles seniors who need to obtain affordable, quality health care even more than the average American does. “My clients have experienced high premiums and loss of doctors,” she notes. Pearl believes that an effective replacement plan would remove the individual and employer penalties for forgoing care, lower the ever-increasing prices, and enable everyone to access high-quality doctors.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Burke from Chesapeake, Va., expressed serious doubts about congressional Republicans’ willingness to abolish the ACA entirely. “I’m concerned that the GOP leaders are wavering under pressure from the Left,” he tells me. He points out, too, that progressives tend to become loud and violent to intimidate the GOP into giving in, and it often works.

“Anything that has to do with Obamacare is atrocious,” he adds. “We have to get rid of it totally. Every one of [Obama’s] promises has failed.” Geoffrey wants Congress to repeal the ACA in its entirety, but he doesn’t think it ought to be replaced by a GOP alternative. “The free market will take care of health care,” he notes, “and churches and charities can fill in the gaps.”

Bobbie Bohr traveled two and a half hours to the rally from King William, Va., on a charter bus full of other southwestern Virginians. “I’d like to talk to President Trump at some point in my life,” she says to me with a chuckle. “I did vote for him. . . . I feel like everything that was done the last eight years was not right, and I’m hoping now things will change.”

Though Bobbie’s real passion is for curbing illegal immigration — her son was killed several years ago by a criminal illegal immigrant who was driving while drunk — she is also opposed to Obamacare. She’s a survivor of both breast cancer and thyroid cancer, and she was on an employer-based health-care plan when she was fighting both diseases. “I’m glad I was on that health care then, because my plan now is not good at all,” she tells me. “There’s definitely got to be something better. It needs to be changed.”

The rally featured several guest speakers, most of whom had their health-care plans canceled or altered as the result of the ACA and who have appeared in AFP ads against Obamacare. For example, Joel and Jessica Huayaban, who own and operate a small business in Kansas, had decided to forgo health-care coverage, as that was the more affordable course for their family of five children. “Obamacare was supposed to help people like me and my family,” Jessica told the crowd. Instead, both Jessica and Joel’s plans were canceled after the ACA was enacted, and they had to hunt outside the traditional market for a community-based option.

Julie Boonstra of Michigan has battled a rare form of leukemia, for which she was receiving treatment through her existing insurance plan before it was canceled by Obamacare. Not able to find cheaper, quality care, Julie was forced to sign up for Medicaid, and she found that the insurance provider, pharmaceutical companies, and the government consistently ignored the advice of her doctors and her best interest. Her doctors “have to obey a federal bureaucracy that is thousands of miles away,” she explained to loud applause. “I am tired and fed up with the pundits and politicians who think they know more about my health care than I do.”

A Canadian woman who at one point came to the U.S. for brain surgery exhorted the audience to push for a full repeal of Obamacare. “No country has perfect health care, but the U.S. has the best chance to get it right,” said Shona Holmes. She was able to receive the surgery she needed in the U.S. after the Canadian health-care system prevented her from accessing adequate care. “You have to keep the government as far away from your health-care choices as you can,” Holmes added.

But there was an elephant in the room at the rally: the draft repeal-and-replace bill released by the House GOP on Monday evening, which has highlighted the extent of the deep divisions within the Republican party on this issue. Though most attendees at the rally didn’t mention the draft bill, AFP president Tim Phillips told the media that his group will firmly oppose any legislation that doesn’t fully repeal Obamacare.

Here’s what the GOP’s draft bill does do. It eliminates the ACA’s unpopular individual and employer mandates, which enforced a penalty for failing to obtain or provide coverage. It repeals Obamacare’s taxes on prescriptions drugs, over-the-counter medications, premiums, and medical devices. It establishes a Patient and State Stability Fund to provide states with $100 billion to design programs for their residents, and it enhances and expands health savings accounts.

The draft bill also preserves two key components of Obamacare: It prohibits insurers from denying coverage for preexisting conditions, and it allows young adults to remain on their parents’ plans until they are 26. And in another point of contention, it replaces the ACA’s subsidies with a monthly tax credit for low- and middle-income people who don’t receive employer-based insurance, the bill’s only response to the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid.

In addition to AFP, the Heritage Foundation, and FreedomWorks, some conservative politicians — including Kentucky senator Rand Paul, Utah senator Mike Lee, and several members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus — want a total repeal of Obamacare before any debate begins over an appropriate replacement plan. (As recently as January, however, both Paul and Freedom Caucus chairman Representative Mark Meadows publicly favored simultaneously repealing and replacing the ACA to prevent losses in coverage.)

Though the bill’s initial prospects seem grim, a senior GOP aide in the House tells National Review that the exhaustive drafting process involved a considerable amount of input from Republican members and should be able to garner plenty of support as a result. Throughout February, according to the aide, House leadership held extensive meetings, open to all members, for discussion of the replacement plan, and the offices of only three GOP members were unable to offer feedback. The aide also notes that the plan is markedly similar to former representative Tom Price’s replacement plan, which received support from the Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee.

Even if the bill does makes it out of the House unscathed — that seems unlikely as of now — its odds of succeeding in the Senate don’t look good either. Even though they will likely use the reconciliation process to prevent Democrats from filibustering, the numbers give Republicans have very little wiggle room in the final vote. And if the divisions between House Republicans seem large, they open into chasms among Republicans in the Senate. At least eight GOP senators have expressed a variety of concerns about the House’s draft, and several senators have developed their own, starkly different replacement plans.

Though the bill’s rollout surely could’ve gone better for House Republican leadership, some view the draft as an acceptable starting point, and both President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Price have praised it. But in the meantime, the GOP must develop a strategy for grappling with the intense inner division in the party, even as Americans across the country continue to be divided on this issue, some campaigning hard against a repeal, and others reminding their representatives, “You promised.”