Facing criticisms over pre-existing conditions, Steve Russell walks a fine line on Obamacare

Nov. 03--email

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Accused repeatedly by his opponent of voting against a mandate that insurance companies cover people with pre-existing medical conditions, U.S. Rep. Steve Russell has found himself pinned politically between his long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act and its most popular provision, which he says he supports.

The Republican congressman faces the same dilemma as many of his GOP colleagues: How, in the face of Democratic criticisms on health care, do you best defend your vote for a bill that would have weakened the pre-existing condition mandate?

Russell, on a debate stage at City Presbyterian Church last month, reiterated his support for the American Health Care Act, a Republican repeal of Obamacare that narrowly passed the House but failed in the Senate last year. He called it "absolutely false" that he voted against pre-existing condition coverage and said the GOP-sponsored legislation prevented insurance companies from denying coverage based on those conditions.

The Republican repeal bill did contain an amendment prohibiting insurance companies from limiting access to people with pre-existing conditions. However, it would have allowed states with high-risk pools -- including Oklahoma -- to obtain waivers. Those waivers would have allowed insurance companies in states like Oklahoma to charge drastically higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions, a practice banned under Obamacare.

In those states, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found, "people who are less healthy, including those with pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions, would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive ... health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all."

Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council for Health Freedom, a conservative think tank that opposes the pre-existing condition mandate, says the Republican bill would have weakened the mandate and started toward repeal but not done away with it entirely.

"It was being sold as a repeal of the law and it wasn't anything near it but if you were just talking about the pre-existing condition piece, it really started to go in that (repeal) direction," she said.

When Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., said last year that the GOP repeal bill would not eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, the nonpartisan fact-checking website Politifact rated that "mostly false."

"Unlike some of the other repeal bills we saw last spring and summer, AHCA did not explicitly seek to do away with protections for people with pre-existing conditions," said Carly Putnam, policy director with the left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute. "However, the bill would have created the opportunity for those protections to be removed nonetheless."

Kendra Horn, a Democrat challenging Russell across a district that includes most of Oklahoma County and all of Pottawatomie and Seminole counties, has homed in on health care in general and pre-existing conditions specifically. In television ads and on the campaign trail, she has accused Russell of breaking a promise he made to constituents not to weaken the pre-existing condition mandate.

"Steve Russell, the Washington politician, went along with Republicans in Congress gutting health care, making it even more expensive," Horn said in a September television ad. "Pre-existing condition? Russell would let insurance companies deny you coverage."

Meanwhile, Obamacare and its pre-existing condition mandate remain the law of the land and voters seem to prefer it that way. A poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation in September found 75 percent of Americans -- and 58 percent of Republicans -- support the mandate, and 72 percent oppose charging sick people more.

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