McCaskill Highlights Importance of Preexisting Condition Protections at Senate Hearing

Senator continues to push against potential rollback of critical healthcare protections for more than one million Missourians

WASHINGTON – At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing today focused on problems in the healthcare system, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, called out continued attempts by the Trump Administration, Republican congressional leadership, and Republican Attorneys General to roll back protections for people with preexisting conditions and raise health insurance costs for millions of Missourians.

“In the latest attempt to strip millions of Americans of their health insurance, Republican Attorneys General—including the Attorney General of my state—have gone to court to take away every single consumer protection in the law and the additional payments that seniors get on prescription drugs to fill the ‘donut hole,’” McCaskill said. “This is decidedly not what the American people want—in fact, as of 2016, an estimated 27 percent of adults under the age of 65—52 million Americans—had preexisting conditions that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain affordable healthcare coverage if they did not have health insurance at work. I can tell you that when I talk about this issue in the town halls of my state—even the reddest parts of my state where I’m not very popular—every head nods. The notion that we’re going to take away these consumer protections with nothing in place, nothing in place to secure these protections is outrageous.”

Click HERE to watch McCaskill’s questioning at the hearing.

Witnesses at the hearing were Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Eugene Dodaro, Comptroller General at the Government Accountability Office.

In her questioning, McCaskill pressed Administrator Verma on the urgent need to maintain all consumer protections for healthcare: “We’re here this month—it would be great if the majority would allow us to vote on a provision that would make sure those protections were in place if the lawsuit was successful. I certainly am willing to stay here weekends, 24/7, to make sure those protections stay in place. There does not seem to be any sense of urgency about the fact that this lawsuit is moving its way through the courts and could blow up—you know, I mean, all of the protections.”

Maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions has been a top priority for McCaskill in the Senate. Last month, she led a group of colleagues in announcing a proposal to defend the constitutionality of preexisting condition protections against a lawsuit by Republican Attorneys General from 18 states, including Missouri, as well as two Governors, that seeks to repeal critical consumer protections that protect healthcare access for more than one million Missourians. At a Senate hearing in June, McCaskill called out Republican efforts to undermine protections on preexisting conditions and raise health insurance costs for millions of Missourians. At the hearing, McCaskill entered into the record a 2010 document that outlined more than 400 preexisting conditions that health insurance companies used to deny coverage to individuals before rules were put in place protecting individuals with preexisting conditions.

McCaskill has also fought against rising healthcare and prescription drug costs since joining the Senate. Earlier this month, she released an investigative report that showed that drug prices directly negotiated by the government could save the Medicare Part D program $2.8 billion in a single year on the 20 most commonly prescribed brand-name drugs alone. In June, McCaskill urged the Trump Administration to halt the implementation of a healthcare proposal that would likely threaten access to quality, affordable care for Missourians, especially those with preexisting conditions. The proposal would mean the expansion of previously limited short-term health insurance plans to year-long “junk” plans that can exclude basic health benefits including hospitalization, prescription drugs, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment. She also introduced two bipartisan bills in March to prohibit pharmaceutical “gag clauses,” which lead patients to overpay for their medications. One of those bills cleared a key committee hurdle last month.

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