So a few months back, Dan Sullivan (R. AK) said this in an interview about the ACA:
http://www.kcaw.org/...
Sullivan served most recently as Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources under Governor Sean Parnell; he resigned last fall, to launch his campaign. Before that, he served as Alaska Attorney General for a year and a half under then-Governor Sarah Palin.
During that time, Sullivan was one of the state attorneys general who sued the Obama administration over the president’s healthcare law.
“When that was passed, I grabbed a small group of attorneys, and I said, hey, before we decide whether or not we’re going to challenge this, let’s figure out what it is. Let’s read it!” Sullivan said. “I’m not going to say I read every word. It’s a big, thick document. But we spent weeks –weeks! — reviewing that law.”
Sullivan ended up recommending the State of Alaska join the suit, arguing that the law was unconstitutional.
In the end, the Supreme Court upheld most of the law, but Sullivan said he’s proud that the Court accepted one argument at the heart of the suit — that the federal government could not force states to expand Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor. Medicaid expansion became optional, and this fall, Governor Parnell announced that Alaska would opt out, citing its cost.
Sullivan said he supports the governor’s decision, and continues to oppose the law, which he argues has done more harm than good.
“Are there elements of that bill, for example preexisting conditions, that I think are positive – yes,” Sullivan said. “But [look at] the overall direction of what that has done and how that has harmed Alaskans.” - KCAW, 4/15/14
Well it turns out for a guy who's spent "weeks" reviewing the law, he sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about:
http://www.adn.com/...
In the interview, he outlined his five-point plan he’s promoted as a replacement to the law. The plan does not appear on Sullivan’s website, though his campaign has tweeted its elements.
The plan is “focused on the concept of freedom,” Sullivan said, before ticking through planks that include transparency, tax reform, tort reform and lowering costs.
His campaign has characterized the Affordable Care Act as a failure based on recently announced premium increases by Alaska insurers -- as high as 37 percent -- and the 5,400 people who received cancellation notices last year because their insurance plans didn’t meet the law’s requirements, though many of those people ultimately ended up having their plans extended.
Sullivan does, however, want to preserve one key element of the Affordable Care Act – insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions. Sullivan wants to do that through high-risk pools, which have in the past forced those individuals to pay higher premiums than people get on the standard market.
As to other elements of the law that Begich cited in his defense of the measure, Sullivan said he was unfamiliar with a provision guaranteeing that women could not be charged different rates than men, though he added he doesn’t support allowing gender-based discrimination if people “are similarly situated with regard to health issues.”
Sullivan wouldn’t directly answer a question about whether he supported a provision of the law requiring insurers that offer dependent coverage to provide it to children up to the age of 26, saying he would leave families to design their own health care plans with the help of their doctors. - Alaska Dispatch, 10/8/14
Here's a little perspective:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The Republican was professing ignorance of the Affordable Care Act's ban on the practice known as "gender rating," whereby insurers would charge women higher premiums than men for identical plans. Sullivan perhaps said he supports -- or doesn't know about -- those provisions because polling shows a paradox: Americans dislike the law, but like that it allows children to stay on their parents' plans until 26, bans discrimination based on gender and eliminates lifetime coverage caps.
This paradox is also illustrated in the manner in which Begich's campaign is approaching the law in Alaska. Though Begich has said in in radio ads he has worked to "fix" the law, a super PAC backing his bid also ran television ads featuring a breast cancer survivor describing how the law enabled her to get health insurance despite her pre-existing condition. - Huffington Post, 10/9/14
Lets help Begich defeat this idiot in November. Click here to donate and get involved with Begich's campaign:
http://www.markbegich.com/