Photo credit: Scott Walker Facebook page
Scott Walker
Scott Walker
Just weeks before the Tuesday, Nov. 6, election, Wisconsin voters are learning about the serious threat from Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Attorney General Brad Schimel that could destroy affordable health care for millions of people with pre-existing health conditions throughout the state and across the nation.
About 2.4 million Wisconsinites with pre-existing conditions—and more than 100 million people nationally—could lose their health insurance or pay exorbitant prices as a result of a federal lawsuit led by Schimel and Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton on behalf of Wisconsin and 19 other Republican-controlled states. That’s a spectacular election-year gift to Walker’s and Schimel’s Democratic opponents, Tony Evers and Josh Kaul, respectively, and in election challenges to Republicans throughout the country in what already was developing into an extremely favorable year for Democratic candidates.
How did Walker and Schimel put themselves in such an unpopular position barely a month before Election Day? They fell in with a bad crowd: Republicans angry over their failure to destroy former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides subsidized health care for millions of previously uninsured Americans. When Walker authorized Schimel to lead yet another Republican lawsuit to try to get the ACA declared unconstitutional (even though the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court had twice ruled otherwise), Walker was simply tossing red meat to anti-Obama Republicans to bounce around federal courts for a few years before getting thrown out.
But several things sped the case along. Republicans filed the lawsuit in Texas to take advantage of that state’s hostility toward Democratic laws, and it went to a Republican-appointed judge who’d previously ruled against the ACA. Then, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions refused to present any defense of the federal law. Defending the law’s health benefits for all Americans fell to 16 Democratic state attorneys general intervening to prevent the Donald Trump administration from throwing the case.
|
|
The Plot Against Health Care
Sensing an opportunity for a quick kill, Schimel and Paxton sought an immediate injunction three weeks ago suspending all benefits and subsidies under the ACA, which would throw the ACA into chaos as open enrollment began on Thursday, Nov. 1. At a minimum, Schimel and Paxton said, the judge should suspend the ACA’s most popular provision—the prohibition against insurance companies refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher rates. The judge delayed any decision—keeping the threat alive such action could demolish protection of health care at any time.
In an instant, the intention of Walker’s and Schimel’s Republican lawsuit to destroy every benefit of the ACA (including coverage of pre-existing conditions) was right out in the open for every voter to see. An immediate flood of dishonest doubletalk from Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, couldn’t hide the intent to completely destroy health care for those with the greatest need for affordable health insurance.
If the Republican lawsuit led by Schimel destroys health care protections for those with pre-existing conditions—as Schimel’s legal team explicitly asked the judge to do—Walker and Kleefisch promised a special session of the state legislature would be called to instantly pass a state law protecting coverage of pre-existing conditions in Wisconsin.
After two years, we’ve learned every single Republican promise about easily replacing the ACA is a lie. Trump was going to magically cover more people for less money. Instead, every Republican bill destroyed health care for millions and would have sent prices skyrocketing for others. If it were easy for Republicans to fund a state system protecting everyone with pre-existing conditions, why hasn’t Walker been able to do so in eight years as governor with Republicans controlling the legislature? Just such a bill failed to pass the state senate earlier this year. The Alice-in-Wonderland explanation from Kleefisch: “Before this, there was not the ACA lawsuit and therefore the issue of urgency.”
Get that? The state now urgently needs to create its own expensive system to protect health care for everyone with pre-existing conditions because Wisconsin’s lawsuit led by Schimel threatens to destroy those protections! Here’s an idea: If the state really wants to protect people with pre-existing conditions, why not simply drop the lawsuit state taxpayers are funding seeking to destroy all the federal protections of the ACA?
That’s exactly what Evers, himself a cancer survivor like Kleefisch, has called upon Walker to do. “Scott Walker, if you’re watching, I have a challenge for you,” Evers said online. “If you want to protect the millions of Wisconsinites with a pre-existing condition, drop Wisconsin from this lawsuit today, because actions speak louder than empty political promises.”
No one really expects Walker, who has turned down hundreds of millions of federal dollars to expand state health care, to do the right thing. So, there’s another more effective, more permanent alternative to protect health care for everyone in Wisconsin with pre-existing conditions: vote both Scott Walker and Brad Schimel out of office.
