Overnight Health Care — Presented by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs — Ryan blasts Medicare for all | Senate Dems to force vote on ‘junk’ insurance plans | Ads hit Collins over Kavanaugh vote
Welcome to Monday’s edition of Overnight Health Care.
While most federal employees had a day off, Paul Ryan came out swinging against Medicare for all. Also, a pro-ObamaCare group is running ads targeting Susan Collins for her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Nevada is the latest state where Democratic and GOP Senate candidates are squaring off over pre-existing conditions protections. If you don’t get our newsletter, CLICK HERE to sign up.
Ryan blasts Medicare for all: ‘Democratic party has gone off the rails”
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Monday joined the list of top Republicans attacking the idea of “Medicare for all.”
In a speech at the National Press Club, Ryan said the embrace of Medicare for all shows that the Democratic Party has “gone off the rails.
Ryan warned that the plan favored by “the Left” would result in Americans having no choice about the cost or coverage of their health insurance.
“Democrats propose to abolish our health care system as we know it,” Ryan said. “And it is the best representation of how far today’s Democratic Party has gone off the rails.”
Medicare for all has become increasingly popular among Democrats and is now favored by many of the party’s potential 2020 presidential candidates.
However, many congressional Democrats have yet to completely embrace the idea, and while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has sponsored a “Medicare for all” bill, there’s no real push for it in Congress.
Top health officials have also attacked the idea. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently said Medicare for all is an idea that’s “too good to be true.” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said it would put seniors at risk, and drain Medicare of necessary funding.
Read more on the speech here.
Senate Democrats to force vote on short term plans this week
Senate Democrats are going to force a (likely unsuccessful) vote this week on overruling the Trump administration’s expansion of short-term plans.
The politics: Even if the vote is unsuccessful, it allows Democrats to highlight the issue of pre-existing conditions, which the party has made central to the campaign ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Democrats point out that the short-term health insurance plans can deny people who have pre-existing conditions.
What’s the dispute? Democrats decry the plans as “junk” insurance because they do not need to cover pre-existing conditions or follow other ObamaCare rules. Republicans argue the plans provide a cheaper option alongside ObamaCare plans.
Read more here.
New ads target Susan Collins for supporting Brett Kavanaugh
A pro-ObamaCare group is targeting Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in new TV and digital ads for voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The ad imitates a breaking news alert, with a narrator saying that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn ObamaCare and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Democrats and activist groups supportive of ObamaCare have argued that Kavanaugh would be the deciding vote against the health-care law should a lawsuit challenging it make it to the Supreme Court.
“Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be a rubber stamp on his war on health care was a true test of Senator Collins’s commitment to health care,” said Protect Our Care Chairwoman Leslie Dach.
Context: Collins is getting a lot of heat from advocacy groups on the left for supporting Kavanaugh. She’s seen as a moderate in the Senate, especially after she helped tank the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal plan last summer. Still, Collins isn’t up for re-election until 2022, so it’s not clear what kind of impacts these ads will have between now and then.
Read more here.
Meanwhile, NARAL Pro-Choice America is launching a $1 million ad campaign hitting vulnerable House Republicans over Kavanaugh.
Their ad juxtaposes images of angry anti-Kavanaugh protesters with pictures of GOP representatives as a voiceover says they are part of the “attack” on women.
The campaign will target vulnerable GOP representatives in top-targeted races for Dems, including GOP Reps. David Young (Iowa), Peter Roskam (Ill.), Kevin Yoder (Kan.), Claudia Tenney (N.Y.), John Culberson (Texas), Jason Lewis (Minn.) and Dave Brat (Va.).
Context: Obviously, House Republicans have no say in who gets confirmed to the Supreme Court. But liberal groups hope the outrage surrounding Kavanaugh’s nomination will motivate Democratic voters to get to the polls in November — and potentially flip the House.
Read more here.
In more midterm news …
A Dem ad accuses Heller of ‘lying’ about record on pre-existing conditions
There’s a war of words around pre-existing condition protections ahead of the midterm elections, and Nevada is the latest battleground.
A new ad from Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen accuses GOP Sen. Dean Heller of “lying” about helping people with pre-existing conditions.
Heller’s campaign says Rosen is the one who is lying.
Rosen’s ad shows a clip of Heller at a press conference last year promising he would not support legislation that would take away health insurance from “hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.”
It adds that Heller “broke his promise” when he voted “yes” on a procedural vote to take up consideration of the Republican repeal and replacement plan, and when he voted yes on the “skinny repeal,” which would have repealed ObamaCare’s mandate to have coverage.
Heller did eventually vote “no” on the GOP repeal and replacement plan, though. Heller’s campaign said the senator actually “stood up for Nevadans with pre-existing conditions” during the repeal debate last year, and noted that the “skinny repeal” he voted for did not touch ObamaCare’s protections for pre-existing conditions.
However, Heller has supported other legislation that does target those protections. Most notably, he co-sponsored the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill, a newer GOP ObamaCare replacement plan, which would allow states to get waivers to allow insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums.
Read more on the fight here
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What we’re reading
The feds’ termination of a tiny contract inflames bitter fight over fetal tissue (Kaiser Health News)
Rare, polio-like condition appears in U.S. again (NBC News)
Addiction treatment gap is driving a black market for suboxone (Side Effects Public Media)
State by State
Supports say tobacco tax increase in Montana will cover Medicaid costs despite Big Tobacco claims (Helena Independent Record)
Medicaid expansion has candidates in Georgia divided on health care (Gainesville Times)
Lawsuit alleging “grossly deficient” medical care at Louisiana State Penitentiary heads to trial (The Advocate)
From The Hill’s opinion page
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