New report from NBC News finds Perdue among other GOP Senators being forced to try to hide their records on health care
Perdue voted to repeal the ACA and its protections for pre-existing conditions
PolitiFact found Perdue’s ad on pre-existing conditions to be “false”
Atlanta, Ga. — A new report from NBC News finds Senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) is among several GOP Senators trying to deceive voters by “obscur[ing]” their position on pre-existing conditions and covering up their previous voting records.
As stated in the article, Perdue is “running ads at odds with [his] own recent votes and policy positions.”
Like other Senators, Perdue’s claims rest on the Protect Act, which has been found to fall short of the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions. According to health policy experts in the report, “the replacement plans they’ve supported fall short of fully restoring those rules.”
This has also been confirmed by the non-partisan fact-checking website PolitiFact, which found Perdue’s ad on pre-existing conditions to be “false,” noting Perdue’s record of voting against the Affordable Care Act and his support for the Protect Act and short-term “junk” insurance plans that “don’t have to cover the package of essential benefits” under the ACA and “can exclude coverage for preexisting conditions.”
Perdue also still supports the Trump Administration-backed Supreme Court lawsuit seeking to overturn the ACA, which if successful, would gut protections for pre-existing conditions.
Read more from NBC News on Perdue being forced to “obscure” his record:
September 15: Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions
NBC News // Sahil Kapur
- Republican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions.
- Republican senators are fighting to maintain control of the chamber, and that has left many telling voters they favor the most popular provisions after they backed legislation that would have chipped away at the protections in the 2010 law. The replacement plans they’ve supported fall short of fully restoring those rules, say health policy experts.
- “When you’re in retreat it’s best to do it slowly and not make it look like a complete spin around,” said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
- Miller said GOP senators are running these ads because they can read polls that show pre-existing condition rules are popular and “don’t want to get crosswise” with voters.
- In an ad released in August, Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is also in a tight battle for re-election, says: “Health insurance should always cover pre-existing conditions. For anyone. Period.” The spot includes his sister, a cancer survivor, who says she is defending “my big brother’s heart” on the issue.
- Perdue … voted to advance the Senate repeal-and-replace measure in 2017.
- Miller, of AEI, thinks Republicans are doing what in military terms is known as “advance to the rear,” suggesting they are retreating while claiming otherwise.
- “A lot has changed since the rhetorical barking in opposition [to Obamacare] from 2009 to 2016, and even in the ambitions of what they’d do legislatively since 2017,” Miller said.
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