Claim: Republicans “have shown themselves willing to cut millions off their health insurance and eliminate preexisting condition protections for millions more, even in the middle of this public health crisis.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: governors, all Republicans, filed a federal lawsuit in February 2018 that would end coverage for pre-existing conditions, and that the Trump administration had chosen to not challenge the suit. In October 2017, the administration ended subsidy payments to health insurance companies, saying that they are "moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market". The decision was expected to raise premiums in 2018 for middle-class families by an average of about 20% nationwide and cost the federal government nearly $200 billion more than it saved over a ten-year period. People with lower incomes would be unaffected because

title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: commit to continuing paying ACA subsidies, which added uncertainty to the insurance market and led insurers to raise premiums for fear they will not get subsidized. In June 2018, the administration sided with a lawsuit to overturn the ACA, including protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions. On October 4, 2018, Trump stated “Some of the Democrats have been talking about ending (coverage for) pre-existing conditions,” and 20 days later he tweeted “Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not!” Politifact rated Trump's statement about Democrats as “Pants on Fire,” also noting that eighteen attorneys general and two

title: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
text: estimated that 13million fewer persons would have health insurance by 2025, including 8million fewer on the Affordable Care Act exchanges and 5million fewer on Medicaid. Fewer persons with healthcare means lower costs for the government, so CBO estimated over $300billion in savings. This allowed Republicans to increase the size of the tax cuts in the bill. Health insurance premiums on the exchanges could rise as much as 10 percentage points more than they would otherwise. CBO later revised this estimate in 2018 to 7 million fewer insured by 2026. The Administration and its Council of Economic Advisors have made several

title: Political positions of the Republican Party
text: however, congressional Republicans expanded Medicare, supporting a new drug plan for seniors starting in 2006. In 2011, Republicans in the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted for a proposal known as The Path to Prosperity and for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and the 2010 health care legislation. Many Republicans support increased health insurance portability, laws promoting coverage of pre-existing medical conditions, a cap on malpractice lawsuits, implementing a streamlined electronic medical records system, an emphasis on preventative care rather than emergency room care, and tax benefits aimed to make health insurance more affordable for the uninsured and to promote universal

title: Economic policy of the Barack Obama administration
text: majority of congressional Democrats voted for the law, while no Republicans in the House or Senate did so. Republicans, mainly in the House of Representatives, attempted on as many as 60 occasions to repeal, defund, or delay the law during Obama's tenure, but to no avail. By 2016, the law covered approximately 24 million people with health insurance via a combination of state healthcare exchanges and funding for the state-level expansion of Medicaid to more people. It lowered the rate of those without health insurance from approximately 16% in 2010 to 9% by 2015. Poltifact cited various estimates that only

title: Dana Rohrabacher
text: On May 4, 2017, Rohrabacher voted in favor of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and passing the American Health Care Act. During his 2018 re-election campaign, Rohrabacher pledged to protect protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. Rohrabacher voted for his party's Obamacare replacement bill that included state waivers from rules that prohibit charging higher prices to people with pre-existing conditions. Rohrabacher was an advocate for the state of California's Proposition 187, which prohibited illegal immigrants from acquiring government services. In 2004, he sponsored an amendment that would have prohibited federal reimbursement of hospital-provided emergency care and

title: American Health Care Act of 2017
text: "HuffPost" and "YouGov" indicating that 44 percent of Americans oppose the AHCA compared to 31 percent who supported it, with 25 percent unsure. "Vox" accused Republicans of dishonesty to their constituents, as many of them had stated their support for laws protecting pre-existing conditions but voting for the AHCA in the end which weakened federal protection for buyers with pre-existing conditions. The GOP's support of the bill and subsequent defense of it despite heavy condemnation and protests was widely condemned, with House Republicans and Speaker Paul Ryan facing the most severe criticism. The Niskanen Center stated that the GOP's successful

title: Barack Obama
text: sick people or deny them coverage for pre-existing conditions, and require every American to carry health coverage. The plan also includes medical spending cuts and taxes on insurance companies that offer expensive plans. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,017-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of 2009. After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over the proposals. In March 2009, Obama lifted a ban

title: Catholic Democrats
text: and the Catholic Social Justice tradition, the group mobilized its members in opposition to Republican efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. The American Health Care Act (the Ryan-Trump health care bill) was withdrawn from consideration in the House of Representatives on March 24, 2017, preserving health insurance for 24 million people who otherwise would have lost it, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Responding to the child abuse allegations made against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Catholic Democrats undertook an advertising campaign appealing to Catholics in Alabama to respond forcefully to the lessons learned from the Catholic clergy abuse

title: Public health insurance option
text: public option accused President Obama of making an agreement to drop the public option from the final plan, but the record showed that the agreement was based on vote counts rather than backroom deals, as substantiated by the final vote in the Senate. In January 2013, Representative Jan Schakowsky and 44 other U.S. House of Representatives Democrats introduced , the "Public Option Deficit Reduction Act", which would amend the Affordable Care Act to create a public option. The bill would set up a government-run health insurance plan with premiums 5% to 7% percent lower than private insurance. The Congressional Budget

title: Claire McCaskill
text: government "contribut[ing] toward the cost of premiums if they meet a certain income threshold." Criticizing Trump's health-care bill in September 2017, she called it "a bait-and-switch, in which they're trying to buy off certain states with promises of more money now, but with no guarantee that healthcare dollars in our state won't ultimately go down." She added that the bill would not help "folks in Missouri who've been sick before and have a pre-existing condition, and older Missourians." At each event during her 2018 re-election bid campaign, McCaskill asked attendees with preexisting conditions to stand up, and vowed to keep

title: Republican Party of Florida
text: Republicans believe that limits on eligibility and benefits must be in place to ensure the safety net is not abused. Republicans are generally opposed to a single-payer universal health care system, such as that found in Canada or in most of Europe, sometimes referring to it as "socialized medicine" and are in favor of the current personal or employer based system of insurance, supplemented by Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid, which covers approximately 40% of the poor. Republicans are generally opposed by labor unions and have supported various legislation on the state and federal levels, including right-to-work legislation and

title: American Health Care Act of 2017
text: and early 60s more than younger enrollees. It also allows states to waive essential health benefits and certain sections of the community rating program. As revised by the MacArthur Amendment, the ACHA weakens protections for patients with preexisting conditions; under this version of the bill, insurers would be able to charge people significantly more if they had a pre-existing condition. On May 3, House Republicans announced that they had enough votes to pass the bill, after amending it to include an additional $8 billion over five years to subsidize insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. On May 4, 2017, the

title: Pre-existing condition
text: to afford insurance in the first place. The "San Francisco Chronicle" has reported that "[c]osts for those with coverage could go up because people in poor health who'd been shut out of the insurance pool would now be included... they would get medical care they could not access before." Senator Mike Enzi, a Republican from Wyoming, has voted to allow insurance companies to consider domestic violence as a pre-existing condition and supported his vote by saying that covering such people could raise insurance premiums to the point where it would preclude others from buying it. He has remarked that "If

title: United States federal government shutdown of 2013
text: health care law should be cut off even if it led to a shutdown. A Pew poll found that 71% of Tea Party Republicans said lawmakers who shared their views should stand by their principles and refuse to compromise in budget negotiations even if that would lead to a shutdown (compared to 18% of Democrats, 36% of independents, and 49% of Republicans overall). In a CNBC poll, 54% of Tea Party Republicans said they wanted the Affordable Care Act defunded even if it meant a government shutdown. Opinion surveys conducted after the shutdown began to show wide dissatisfaction with the

title: Chuck Grassley
text: it would, but at higher premiums. He said that with the proposed legislation premiums "maybe wouldn't go up or would go up a heck of a lot less than they would without a bill." In July 2017, Grassley stated that Senate Republicans should be ashamed for not having passed their healthcare bill and this could translate to a loss of their majority in the 2018 elections. In August 2018, Grassley was one of ten Republican senators to cosponsor legislation intended to protect ObamaCare provisions for people with pre-existing conditions. Health experts said that the bill did not prevent insurers from

title: Kevin McCarthy (California politician)
text: McCarthy's tweet was a "straight-up antisemitic move." As House majority leader, McCarthy led efforts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). In March 2017, the House Republican repeal legislation, the American Health Care Act, was pulled from the floor minutes before a scheduled vote. Following changes made during an internal Republican debate, the bill narrowly passed the House, 217-213, in a May 2017 party-line vote. The House Republican leadership's decision to hold a vote on the legislation before receiving a budget-impact analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was controversial. The CBO subsequently issued a

title: Implementation history of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
text: 2017. The CBO estimated that the repeal would cause 13 million people to lose their health insurance by 2027. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Patty Murray reached a compromise to amend the Affordable Care Act to fund cost cost-sharing reductions. President Trump had stopped paying the cost sharing subsidies and the Congressional Budget Office estimated his action would cost $200 billion, cause insurance sold on the exchange to cost 20% more and cause one million people to lose insurance. The plan will also provide more flexibility for state waivers, allow a new "Copper Plan" or catastrophic coverage for all, allow

title: Presidency of Barack Obama
text: a ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. However, the House bill included a tax increase on families making more than $1 million per year and a public health insurance option, while the Senate plan included an excise tax on high-cost health plans. The 2010 Massachusetts Senate special election victory of Scott Brown seriously imperiled the prospects of a health care reform bill, as Democrats lost their 60-seat Senate super-majority. The White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi engaged in an extensive campaign to convince both centrists and liberals in the House to pass the Senate's health care bill, the

title: Angus King
text: believed he would have died had he not just acquired health insurance. In January 2017, King voted against the Republican Senate budget plan to accelerate repeal of the ACA and block repeal legislation from being filibustered; the measure passed on a party line 51-48 vote. He spoke out against the House Republican repeal legislation, noting that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 14 million Americans would lose health insurance if the legislation were enacted. King stated that the House Republican bill, "If you were designing a bill to hammer my state, it would be this bill," saying that it would