Senate Democrats are reportedly devising an aggressive response to Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal, should Republicans there be able to use procedural tools to bring the House-passed repeal effort to the floor. What's emerging is an effort to force Republicans to vote on individual, popular elements of the law.
Nothing's been finalized, including precisely how they'd go about it. But the point would be to turn a global health care repeal push into something more piecemeal -- should seniors pay back their $250 doughnut hole check? Should children with pre-existing conditions be stripped of insurance?
"Senior staff are giving serious consideration to the strategy of forcing Republicans to take tough votes on extremely popular elements of the health care law, including the doughnut hole provision, as well as pre-existing conditions," the aide said.
That strategy apparently starts today. Senators Chuck Schumer and Robert Mendendez have written to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, demanding an answer to a critical repeal question that, so far, Republicans have blown off: will seniors in the donut hole have to reimburse the government for the $250 checks they received to cover prescription drugs?
"We are particularly concerned that repeal would reverse the course of making prescription drugs more affordable for seniors," Schumer and Menendez write. "The [repeal] legislation approved by the House could require seniors to repay the government."
One of the major goals of the Affordable Care Act is to close the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap, better known to most as the "donut hole." The law will fill that hole over a decade, and in 2010, that meant many seniors received a $250 rebate check.
"Richard Foster, the Chief Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has said that "in theory," seniors would have to return the checks if repeal becomes law," the letter reads....
Asked about this at a recent press availability, Cantor claimed it's not the Republicans' intention to make seniors pay the money back. But he left open the possibility that they might have to fix that problem down the road.
The Republicans' repeal bill did not carve out the $250 rebate, or new coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, or for continuing coverage for young people on their parents' plans, so the Republicans' "intentions" for repeal seem clear, and the absence of any other plan for replacing the ACA are at this point little more than a pipe dream. So it's a good question from Schumer and Mendendez. More of this, please, Senate Dems.