Rep. Bilirakis Celebrates His Vote To End Your Health Care With Trump
"Rep. Bilirakis is adamant about protecting those with pre-existing conditions."
That's what Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis' office told us when Beach Peanuts reached them by phone earlier last week concerning the Republican's upcoming vote on the first step to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and "replace" it with their own plan, the so-called American Health Care Act, or "Trumpcare" if you will.
Last Thursday, the bill passed in the House with a vote split down party lines. All Florida Democrats voted against it, and all Florida Republicans except one voted for it. That one GOP "no" vote came from Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who recently announced she isn't running for reelection. With her vote, Ros-Lehtinen put her constituents needs first, unlike her colleagues. (More on the reason for her vote below.)
The name American Health Care Act that replaces the Affordable Care Act is fitting in one sense, because they have certainly removed the "affordable" part. But truth be told, they should have also removed the words "health care," because as health care experts, hospitals, physicians, nurses, advocacy groups and countless other medical organizations have stated, this is anything BUT a health care bill. Some have even called it an "abomination," and rightfully so. It's just another tax cut for the richest Americans disguised as a health care bill, in that it takes savings and costs going towards health care away from those who need it and shifts it to the wealthy minority at the top while giving the health insurance industry the gift of returning to the old days when they could pick and choose what to cover and how much to charge you for it. Worse, they added bonuses that will actually make our health insurance system even worse for consumers than it was before the ACA was passed in 2010.
Republicans tried and failed twice before to write a bill that would bring all their factions together, so this week they came to an agreement. They managed to craft a bill that was even more cruel than the previous versions, and that's what brought the party together. A bill that could throw an estimated 24 million people off their health care, and would kill huge numbers by pricing anyone who gets sick out of the market altogether while allowing insurers to opt-out of covering essential health benefits and ending protections for pre-existing conditions.
This brings us to the self-proclaimed guardian of pre-existing condition protections, Rep. Gus Bilirakis.
Blirakis knows his constituents' concerns all too well. Back in February he held a couple "listening session" town halls where large crowds voiced their worries over Republican's like Bilirakis' plans to take away their insurance and end the benefits the ACA provided them with. One constituent begged Bilirakis" "Please don't take my life away. Please don't let me die." Well, Bilirakis "listened," and then voted to do just that anyway.
When we reached his office by phone earlier last week, his office said he hadn't yet read the bill, but when we pointed out his decision would be a matter of life and death for his constituents, they reassured us that Bilirakis was "adamant" on protections for those with pre-existing conditions. If this were true, how did he go from being adamant about those protections before he reviewed the bill, to voting "yes" to a bill that he knew would absolutely remove them?
Enter the smoke and mirrors.
After the vote, Bilirakis tried to deceive his constituents with false narratives to explain why he voted with this video:
On this week’s #DiscussWithGus, I address my votes on the American Health Care Act & the 2017 gov't spending bill. https://t.co/cyfGEelcEU
— Gus Bilirakis (@RepGusBilirakis) May 4, 2017
What Bilirakis says above isn't exactly true:
Bilirakis: "I believe this is going to lower costs and we'll have more access to good quality health care."
He may claim to "believe" this, but that doesn't make it true, which may be why he phrases it that particular way. No, the AHCA won't lower costs unless you never plan to get sick or need insurance. Premiums are likely to skyrocket due to several factors. States would be allowed to waive restrictions on essential health benefits and pre-existing condition coverage, the latter which would make premiums prohibitively expensive according to this table put together by The Center For American Progress. As I wrote last week, since Florida Republicans and Gov. Rick Scott have turned Florida into the anti-health care state, the chances that Florida would be among the states to waive those protections are probably in the neighborhood of around 99 percent. Here are just a few examples of future premium hikes for Floridians under the new GOP plan:
(Via: CAP)
And this doesn't even take into account the problem of Medicaid. Florida already refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA, and they've tried to strip away access to what little is left as it is. Under the GOP plan, Medicaid expansion would be phased out altogether, and further cuts to Medicaid would make it unsustainable, leaving the poor and elderly without a safety net.
As far as access to good quality health care goes, everyone has "access" to health care, but say you're a breast cancer patient who can't afford the $27,030 surcharge above, what then? If you can't afford the exorbitant rate hikes, well, the Republicans are offering you empty words. Forget the good quality health care Bilirakis speaks of. Good luck finding care at all. Access does't do you any good if you can't afford it.
Bilirakis: "Obamacare is failing" and he cites Iowa as an example.
Obamacare/ACA isn't failing, nor in a death spiral, nor broken as Donald Trump and the Republicans have been claiming for years now. However, they have all worked to sabotage it, and that may indeed make things worse for the health care system. Because of all the chaos caused by Republicans meddling and throwing together new plans without careful consideration, study, and CBO scores, there is a growing uncertainty in the system. Insurers have noted the chaos and it may cause a domino effect and could collapse the system. This is what is happening in Iowa. Iowa was an ACA success story until the Republicans began meddling with repeal efforts. Due to the subsequent uncertainty, insurers are pulling out of the state. Obamacare has been working pretty well and millions of people now have health insurance because of it. If Obamacare fails now, it will be because Trump, Republicans and Bilirakis have taken steps to make it fail. They will be the ones to blame if the system collapses and millions lose their insurance. Instead of working with Democrats to make improvements, Republicans are threatening to make things even worse than they were before the ACA was passed in 2010. The GOP plan to repeal it will virtually blow up the country's health care system.
Bilirakis: "And we will be covering pre-existing conditions." He cites the Upton Amendment "for those who can't afford coverage for pre-existing conditions."
The Upton Amendment is also largely cosmetic, in that it will just barely address the cost and coverage issues on pre-existing conditions. You can read more details about that here, but essentially even with the Upton amendment, the staggeringly large funding gap could leave many Americans with pre-existing conditions stranded outside the high-risk pool without affordable options for coverage. As with everything else, Bilirakis is playing fast and loose with the truth here. When coverage comes to a matter of life and death for those with pre-existing conditions who can't afford the exorbitant GOP premium hikes, Bilirakis is offering his constituents mere platitudes.
Bilirakis: "This is just the beginning folks," saying the bill will go on to the Senate where "it will be improved," and "in the end, we're going to have a good bill."
"Just the beginning, to be improved" he says. That's an understatement. House Republicans threw together a heartless, cruel bill that throws millions off their insurance, prices people out of the market and passed it without a CBO score to tell them what it would cost, and in some cases, members didn't even bother to read it. Bilirakis admits as much by saying "In the end we're going to have a good bill." One might ask why not have a good bill in the first place? The answer is they wanted to shove something, anything through just so Trump could pretend he had a win. He has no clue what's in the bill either. Of course, the other elephant in the room is the fact that they're in a hurry to get another tax cut for the rich, and that may well include another tax cut for Trump. That tax cut won't pay for itself, so Republicans like Bilirakis are going to rob you of your health care to pay for it. If you think the Republicans in the Senate won't do the same thing, think again.
Bilirakis then goes on to say that even though he and his staff are on Obamacare/ACA, he co-sponsored legislation to remove the exemption for members of Congress. As the bill was written, members of Congress were exempt from all the changes and restrictions they came up with for the rest of us. In other words, everyone likes their Obamacare, but Republicans wrote the bill to make sure only THEY were allowed to keep it. The rest of us would be stuck with the AHCA (Trumpcare.) Due to public outcry when word of this little built-in goodie for Congress members leaked out, the Republicans came up with another bill to remove the exemption. However, that bill is largely meaningless. As the Washington Post explains here, members of Congress get their insurance through the ACA small-group exchanges in the District of Columbia where the government isn't likely to forgo enforcement of the protections in the ACA. So even if they're "exempt," they likely won't face higher premiums for pre-existing conditions, nor lose access to all the benefits being removed for the rest of the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Again, Bilirakis is stretching the truth. He'll keep all the benefits and savings while voting away yours.
As I wrote above, Bilirakis and all the other Florida Republicans in the House voted for this bill, except for one who won't be seeking reelection, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She explained her vote against AHCA/Trumpcare this way:
“After studying the revised bill, I intend to vote NO. This plan still does not effectively address the needs of my South Florida constituents. The proposed changes to this bill would leave too many of my constituents with pre-existing conditions paying more for health insurance coverage and too many of them will even be left without any coverage at all. Additionally, this new plan still includes painful cuts to Medicaid that will make it more difficult to care for patients with high costs of coverage due to special needs or chronic diseases. Unfortunately, the bill does not deliver what my district needs and until a plan that helps South Florida is proposed, I will continue to side with my constituents in opposing this plan.”
Now let's compare her statement to one from Bilirakis' in February on his "concern" for those with pre-existing conditions:
“I heard a clear message from my constituents at recent town halls: people with pre-existing conditions need the peace of mind of knowing that they can get–and keep–health care,” said Bilirakis. “At events in Palm Harbor and New Port Richey, I listened to folks share personal stories about themselves and loved ones who were denied access to coverage because of a chronic illness. I made a promise to gather input from the people of Florida’s 12th District about the future of our nation’s health care, and I am keeping that promise with this legislation. We will protect those with pre-existing conditions and put in place a health care system that works for everybody.”
Yet Bilirakis took that "clear message," ignored it, and voted against his constituents' wishes anyway, and now he's trying to deceive them again by making false clams about a life and death decision he made for them with this vote.
Bilirakis has a "safe seat" he inherited from his father, so he feels he can vote as he pleases without consequence. Instead, he should be ashamed of this vote, and ashamed of trying to sell his voters on this abomination disguised as a health care bill, and he should be voted out of office for it. It's one thing to have and share core beliefs with your voters, but it's another to completely deceive them with smoke and mirrors, particularly when their lives are at stake. Yes, they deserve the same good quality affordable health care as he does, his words. But as it stands now, he'll keep his. They won't.
To be blunt, this bill will kill people if it's passed into law. Republicans are all using the same false narratives to try and snow the public, and I wouldn't bet my life on the Senate making many changes now that it's in their chamber.
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA), below, summarized the plight the American public faces here. Republicans and Bilirakis made a choice. Their voters deserve a choice too, and they deserve an honest Representative who is looking out for their best interests in Congress.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis is not that Representative.
