WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday that hundreds of thousands of Arkansans would lose access to health care and health insurance if Republicans repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But Republican members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation said they remain committed to overturning the law.
In a call with reporters Thursday, White House Deputy Senior Adviser David Simas said millions of Americans now receive free preventive health care like mammograms and immunizations, rebates when insurance companies don’t spend enough on health care, cheaper prescriptions for Medicare recipients and other benefits that would go away if the 2010 healthcare law, commonly called Obamacare, goes away.
All told, 71 million Americans on private insurance have received free preventive care; 129 million Americans, including 17 million children, with pre-existing conditions now can’t be denied insurance; and up to 41 million Americans have access to care through Medicaid or private insurance bought in insurance marketplaces.
“This is no longer an abstraction,” Simas said. “Repeal means taking that away from them.”
The Republican-controlled U.S. House has voted more than 40 times to repeal the law, which Democrats and President Barack Obama have said is not a possibility as long as the president is in the White House and Democrats control the Senate.
Simas said it is time to stop “fighting old battles” and work to fix problems with the law without repealing the entire thing.
By email, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor agreed, calling the law“far from perfect” and saying he is working with “responsible Republicans in the Senate to fix what needs fixing and hold the Obama administration accountable.”
“At the same time, a group of reckless House members prefer that we return to the days of insurance company abuses, and the nearly 73,000 Arkansans already enrolled under our state’s private option would once again be one illness or accident away from bankruptcy,” the Democrat from Arkansas said.
But Republican members of Arkansas’ delegation said the foundation of the Affordable Care Act, the requirement that some employers offer insurance and the mandate that most individuals purchase health insurance or pay fines, is the problem, not the side issues.
Rep. Tim Griffin said Republicans like and want to keep some of the programs highlighted by the White House, but they want to get rid of the mandates on workers and their employers.
“You can accomplish all of that and more without wrecking health care for everyone else if you reform health care differently,” Griffin said. “Can you fix Obamacare? No.Obamacare is built on a crumbling faulty foundation.”
Sen. John Boozman said through a spokesman that the benefits highlighted by the White House on Thursday don’t outweigh the law’s negative effects.
“Obamacare doubles down on a broken, unaffordable health-care system,” the Arkansas Republican said. “No amount of free screenings and public health grants can disguise the fact that millions have received cancellation letters from their insurance companies, premiums spikes are busting family budgets, and businesses remain frozen with nowhere to turn.”
A spokesman for Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called the law unworkable and unaffordable.
“No amount of political spin from the Obama administration can make up for the fact that 50,000 Arkansas families are losing the insurance they were promised they could keep, and countless others are seeing their premiums skyrocket,” spokesman Caroline Rabbitt said.
She said Cotton supports repealing the law and replacing it with changes like allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines and eliminating differences in tax treatment of employer-sponsored and individual insurance.
A spokesman for Arkansas’ Rep. Steve Womack said Womack will oppose the law as long as his constituents do. A spokesman for Rep. Rick Crawford said health-care costs need to be addressed, but it is not financially sound to create a new government program to do so.
According to the White House, this is how Arkansans have benefited from the Affordable Care Act so far:
578,000 individuals on private insurance have used at least one free preventive health-care service such as a mammogram, birth control or an immunization in 2011 and 2012. In the first 11 months of 2013, an additional 311,400 Medicare recipients received at least one preventive service at no out-of-pocket cost.
Up to 1,239,000 individuals with pre-existing conditions such as asthma, cancer or diabetes - including up to 168,000 children - can no longer be denied coverage or charged higher prices because of their health statuses or histories.
Approximately 604,000 Arkansans have expanded mental-health and substance-abuse-treatment benefits and federal assurances of equivalent coverage for mental health, as well as physical health.
478,000 uninsured Arkansans will now have health-insurance options through Medicaid or private health plans in the insurance marketplace.
Insurance companies have sent rebates averaging $49 per family to approximately 121,200 consumers because the companies spent less than 80 percent of the consumers’ premiums on health care.
In the first 10 months of 2013, 26,700 senior citizens and people with disabilities have each saved an average of $682 on prescription medications as the health-care law closes Medicare’s “doughnut hole.”
35,000 young Arkansans can now stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26.
Health benefits can no longer have a lifetime limit. Starting in January, 865,000 Arkansans will no longer have annual limits, either.
Arkansas’ approximately 100 health centers have received $54,131,000 to provide primary care, establish new sites and renovate existing centers to expand access to quality health care. They served about 165,000 people in 2012.
The White House didn’t release an estimate on the public and private costs of the additional programs.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/20/2013