Jacky Rosen

Senator Dean Heller is on TV right now with an ad telling voters that he’s “fighting to protect pre-existing conditions.” Every Nevada voter should do their homework on this one.

The ACA is far from perfect, and Congress needs to act in a bipartisan way to fix our health care system. There are real solutions I’m supporting to stabilize the exchanges, lower the cost of premiums, bring down prescription drug costs, address our doctor shortages and create a public option for affordable health insurance. But I haven’t met a single person who thinks we should roll back coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

In 2011, then-Congressman Heller voted to repeal the law entirely with no exception for the pre-existing conditions provisions. Nevada families would have been right back at the whim of big insurance companies who wanted to discriminate against sick people or deny them coverage entirely.

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Last year, Senator Heller caved under pressure from President Trump and voted to advance the ACA repeal plan passed by House Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that bill would have meant people with pre-existing conditions “would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all.”

A few days later, Senator Heller put his name on reckless legislation to dismantle the ACA. Experts say the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment would “eliminate or weaken many ACA pre-existing condition protections,” empowering states to let insurance companies charge sick people more. Senator Heller recently said he’ser’s real record shows he can’t be trusted on pre-existing conditions: Rosen still “to this day” trying to find 51 votes to pass this toxic plan.

After attacking the ACA’s coverage protections for pre-existing conditions for almost a decade, how does Senator Heller expect anyone to believe what he’s saying?

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Even in the face of a new lawsuit backed by Republican attorneys general and the Trump administration that would overturn protections for people with pre-existing conditions, Senator Heller has been unwilling to stand up.

Last month, I introduced a resolution to authorize the Office of the General Counsel in the House to intervene in federal court and defend the constitutionality of the ACA’s coverage protections for pre-existing conditions. More than 100 members of the House have joined me in supporting this resolution. When 49 members of the Senate including Catherine Cortez Masto introduced a similar resolution, Dean Heller declined to join them. For months, Senator Heller has been dodging questions and refusing to denounce the GOP lawsuit.

Senator Heller knows his agenda is unpopular, so now he’s trying to do some damage control. His solution? A disingenuous plan to let insurance companies decline to cover treatments for pre-existing conditions and base premiums on factors that are essentially the same as basing them on medical histories.

Senator Heller’s bill has been widely panned as inadequate by health care policy experts, well-respected patient groups like the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and even Republican Senator Susan Collins.

Nevada’s top health exchange official said Senator Heller’s bill would weaken the ACA’s pre-existing protections “to the detriment of consumers, providers and Nevada’s public health.” For good reason, this self-serving political stunt has been compared to “throwing a 10-foot rope to somebody in a 20-foot hole.”

Of course, it’s no wonder Senator Heller is caving to corporate special interests — he’s taken half a million dollars in campaign contributions to date from the insurance industry.

So when you see Senator Heller say that he’s “fighting to protect pre-existing conditions,” let’s be crystal clear: he’s lying. His record in Washington proves it.

Rep. Jacky Rosen is a Nevada candidate for U.S. Senate.