Faso defends Republican health-care bill at Kingston forum

Times Herald-Record (Middletown, NY)

May 09--KINGSTON -- Rep. John Faso told about 100 people Monday the House Republican health-care bill keeps the best of Obamacare and then, to top it off, lowers costs for everyone.

"I think we are building on the experience of the ACA (Obamacare) in many respects. It is not being junked," Faso, a Republican from Kinderhook, said at the Kingston Library.

"But it is vitally important that we take action to lower premiums and deductibles ... so people can afford it," he said.

It is hard to say if Faso made any converts to his position at the forum.

It was sponsored by the New York Statewide Senior Action Council and scheduled before Faso cast one of the votes to push the Republican health-care legislation over the finish line in the House of Representatives and send it to the Senate.

That legislation and the vote for it were the main focus of the questions from the audience.

They charged that the legislation cuts funding for pre-existing conditions, taking funds from the poor to cover tax breaks for the rich, and was passed when no one had fully read it and did not know what it would cost or how many would lose health insurance as a result.

At one point, more than half of the audience stood when a woman asked who among them had a pre-existing condition.

They will not lose coverage, Faso said.

Faso said pre-existing conditions are covered by the plan in all but a few cases. The exceptions are people who let their coverage lapse, and states where the governors request and get a federal waiver for the individual market.

In both cases, people would be charged more for only a year, he added. And in those few cases, the states have to set up risk pools with federal money to help cover the expenses.

The audience hooted and groaned in disbelief.

Faso said the cuts in funding to the poor are not so much cuts as a slow-down in the growth of Medicaid spending.

The cut of capital-gains taxes for the rich are designed to spur economic growth, he said. "We are not going to agree" on keeping the tax, Faso said to grumbling from the audience.

Faso fired a couple political rounds of his own.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has criticized a Faso amendment in the bill that requires New York to assume the full cost of Medicaid instead of leaving counties to pay 25 percent of it.

"His numbers are fake," Faso said of Cuomo, to groans.

And Faso rapped Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney over criticism Maloney had leveled at Faso over the health-care bill.

"Two weeks ago ... he said, as did I, that he hoped to work with each other on a bipartisan basis, and barely two weeks later he has reverted to partisan form. It's sad, but I can't tell you it was unexpected. That is his reputation."

Margo McGilvrey of Saugerties paused as she left the session. "He is a typical slick politician," she said. "I don't believe he is telling his constituents the truth."

pbrooks@th-record.com

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