Fact check: Are Abbott’s ads defending Texas GOP under fire from Democrats over health care true?
Last year, Texas passed a bill to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions, the ads brag. But the bill just set up a process for devising a fix for high premiums sick Texans paid – before 2013.
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AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott and fellow Republicans in the Texas House, under attack from Democrats saying they haven’t done enough on health care, have responded by talking a lot lately about a bill they’ve passed in each of the past two legislative sessions.
But did North Richland Hills GOP Sen. Kelly Hancock’s legislation really shield Texans with chronic medical problems from again facing a situation in which health insurance is unaffordable?
With the U.S. Supreme Court slated next month to hear a lawsuit led by Texas that attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, Democrats have used the prospect of reduced protections for people with pre-existing conditions for everything from trying to stall the ascent of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to winning control of the Texas House.
A pro-Democratic super PAC, Forward Majority Action Texas, has said it’ll run $12 million in ads targeting 18 state representative seats, many now held by North Texas Republicans. Many of the ads hammer GOP candidates for opposing Obamacare and cheering state Attorney General Ken Paxton as he pressed the lawsuit.
Last week, Abbott dipped into his $38 million campaign fund to air ads defending Republican candidates for the House in 24 districts.
In a digital ad featuring Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, the two-term lawmaker defends the GOP record on health care. Oliverson says Republicans passed legislation to protect Texans with pre-existing conditions from losing access to coverage.
Democrats and health care experts, though, have said that if the state falls back on a past solution, as the state legislation suggested, it would provide far less protection than current Obamacare provisions.
Here’s a look at the ad, its claims and what the bill’s author and a leading progressive health-care policy analyst say:
The ad
Oliverson, an anesthesiologist wearing a white lab coat, speaks to camera:
"As a physician lawmaker, I can tell you there’s been a lot of false and misleading information on health care. So let me give you the facts. In 2019, Texas Republicans passed legislation to protect patients with pre-existing conditions from losing access to health insurance.
“And while we were at it, we banned surprise medical bills, expanded women’s health care through the Texas Healthy Women’s program and put a limit on future growth of prescription drug prices. So remember, on health care, Texas Republicans are working for you.”
Pre-existing condition stopgap bills
In 2017 and 2019, Hancock, an influential Republican in the state Senate, passed laws lasting just two years each. They set out a process for creating “a temporary health insurance risk pool.”
Bill author says
On Monday, Hancock recalled that he wrote the first one when Republicans controlled Congress and were seeking to repeal Obamacare. The second, last year, was in anticipation of a possible court ruling overturning the federal law, he said.
The 2019 measure lets the state insurance commissioner create a temporary high-risk pool “substantially similar” to the one the Legislature abolished in 2013, after the federal law’s health-insurance underwriting changes kicked in.
That entity, funded with a state tax on health insurers, never covered more than 28,000 Texans.
Some people faced waiting periods for coverage of their pre-existing conditions to kick in.
Even with a subsidy, risk-pool premiums averaged $666 a month in 2013. By contrast, this year, the average silver plan in the Obamacare Marketplace in Texas costs $418 a month — and and that’s before subsidies kick in for low- and middle-income people.
On Monday, Hancock said he wasn’t necessarily thinking of using the old high-risk pool as a model. After GOP state leaders and “stakeholders” deliberated, it could take a different shape, depending on what state or federal funds are available.
“This is to make sure we’re taking care of the least of those that may be in a bad situation, if the ACA goes away,” he said. “We’re going to take care of them at a state level until we can pass legislation to address this.”
Policy analyst says
Stacey Pogue of Every Texan, the former Center for Public Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, said Hancock’s four-page bill “simply doesn’t provide meaningful access to coverage for people with preexisting conditions.”
The old high-risk pool approach is “clearly inadequate,” she said. More than 1-in-4 nonelderly Texans has a chronic condition that, in the state’s individual market before Obamacare, would have resulted in denial of coverage, she said.
Just proclaiming that insurers can’t limit or exclude coverage because of pre-existing conditions doesn’t by itself achieve much, Pogue said. Under Obamacare, there are no lifetime limits, policies must cover pregnancy and mental-health conditions, and people can’t be denied coverage, she noted.
On the other things Oliverson mentioned in the ad, though, lawmakers passed laudable measures in 2019, she said.
Bottom line:
Last year, Texas passed a bill to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions, the Abbott ad brags. But the bill just set up a process for devising a fix for high premiums sick Texans paid — before 2013. There’s no detail and no funding source identified.
Essentially, it’s a promise to act.
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