August 24, 2020 10:06 AM UTC

Truth Test Plus: 9NEWS Blows Up More Than Gardner's Record

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Let the word go forth: “That is actually horse excrement.”

9NEWS’ Kyle Clark is referring to Cory Gardner’s pre-existing conditions bill (below), but t seems to us this could find its way into an awful lot of content.

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Friday evening, 9NEWS ran a “Truth Test” fact check of a recent ad from Chuck Schumer-connected PAC Majority Forward targeting Sen. Cory Gardner’s record on health care, specifically Gardner’s numerous votes in the U.S. House and Senate to terminate the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that insurance companies cover patients with pre-existing conditions–a provision which despite the decade-long war by the GOP against “Obamacare” has remained so popular that not even Donald Trump himself dared to threaten it as Republicans tried and failed to repeal the ACA in 2017.

With respect to Gardner’s many votes to repeal the ACA with no provision to protect patients with pre-existing conditions, there’s really nothing more than this to say:

BOTTOM LINE: Yes, Gardner has a voting history to weaken the Affordable Care Act, including coverage for those with preexisting conditions. [Pols emphasis] However, voters should have known that when they elected him in 2014 in the first place.

This year, we do expect Gardner’s record on health care to factor more strongly in voters’ thinking than in the GOP wave midterm of 2014–but despite what Gardner says now, it’s true that nobody can deny he has repeatedly voted to do away with protection for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. It was true in 2014, too.

Although this fact-check substantially validates the basic contention in the ad, which is that Cory Gardner has repeatedly voted against protections for patients with pre-existing conditions,  the more important takeaway from this story is Zelinger’s look at legislation recently introduced with tremendous hype by Sen. Gardner in order to rebut accusations based on his record–S. 4506, “To ensure coverage of pre-existing conditions under private health insurance, and for other purposes.”

The bill text is eight lines long, when you open it in pdf form…

It does require insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, it just doesn’t require an insurance company to take you on in the first place. [Pols emphasis]

“In order to truly protect people who are sick with preexisting conditions, you have to be willing to strictly regulate insurance companies and provide the kind of funding that would keep the insurance market stable. And this bill from Sen. Gardner falls well short of providing comprehensive protections for people with preexisting conditions,” said Larry Levitt, vice president of Kaiser Family Foundation.

Because this legislation is in its most charitable reading redundant to the ACA’s much stronger and more explicit protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, all Gardner has really done with this attempt at a diversion is highlight his many failed attempts to enable exactly what this bill is supposed to prevent. But because under a more thorough examination the absurdly short bill Gardner took days to release the text of turns out to contain a glaring loophole that insurance companies could exploit to deny patients with pre-existing conditions coverage to begin with, it’s even worse for Gardner. Either he knows his bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or he’s that clueless. Either way, it’s a fig leaf over a record no one can honestly dispute.

The truth of Gardner’s worthless bill, a sidebar in this fact check, is something every voter should know.