Josh Hawley, the Republican nominee against Missouri’s US senator Claire McCaskill (D), has made protecting people with pre-existing conditions a key part of his campaign platform — even as he undermines those protections as his state’s attorney general.
Asked to reconcile that hypocrisy on Sunday, Hawley pretended that requiring that insurance companies offer some policy to the more than 100 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions is the sa...
health care
Ahead of midterms, Republicans suddenly pretend they haven’t opposed Medicare for decades
Once a upon a time, conservatives cautioned against the creation of a government-run health insurance program for people over 65, calling Medicare “socialized medicine.” But now — in campaign ads and speeches — Republicans across the country are positioning themselves as the real defenders of Medicare.
The new posturing helps conservatives claim they’re the ones preserving the status quo. Nevermind Republican lawmakers’ long quest to privatize Med...
Dean Heller attacks stage 4 cancer survivor while lying about his health care record
In a statement posted to his website, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) attacks stage 4 cancer survivor Laura Packard as a “Democrat political operative” while falsely claiming he’s “stood up for Nevadans for pre-existing conditions.”
In reality, as ThinkProgress detailed, Heller and every other Senate Republican with the sole exception of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) voted on Wednesday “against blocking the Trump administration’s expansion of health plans tha...
Read: Donald Trump’s USA Today op-ed, annotated
With the midterm elections fast approaching, Donald Trump has picked up a pen to help the party. In an op-ed published today in USA Today the president attacks a Democratic healthcare plan, claims they want to erase the US’s borders, and threatens that a Democratic victory ...
Senate Republicans show their true colors when it comes to pre-existing conditions
Protecting people with pre-existing conditions isn’t a priority for Republicans — lowering insurance premiums is. Senate Republicans said as much when they voted Wednesday against blocking the Trump administration’s expansion of health plans that can deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
In a 50-50 vote, Republicans defeated Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-WI) resolution to overturn the Trump administration’s rule permitting insurers to sell sho...
Donald Trump slams Democrats’ health care proposal in USA Today op-ed
U.S. President Donald Trump is stepping up his attack on Democrats over a health care proposal called Medicare for All, claiming it "would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives."
Medicaid expansion is on the ballot again in Maine this November
PORTLAND, MAINE — “When I’m in pain, I take Tylenol. I can’t have it looked at,” said 59-year-old Ann Avery, her voice cracking before she started to cry.
“I did find the list of some of the things that’s wrong me,” she told ThinkProgress. Depression, coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, and Piriformis syndrome, to name a few.
“I have no idea what some of these things are,” Avery said. But she could tell you theyR...
Lies don’t get more brazen than the one Rohrabacher is telling his constituents about health care
On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) shared a touching campaign video detailing how his daughter Annika’s leukemia diagnosis made the need to protect people with pre-existing conditions personal for him.
“Politicians argue a lot about health care, but for me, it’s personal,” Rohrabacher says, while standing next to his daughter. “When my daughter Annika was 8 years old, she was afflicted with leukemia. It was devastating to my family, bu...
Former UN chief Ban Ki-moon: US health care system is ‘politically wrong, morally wrong’
Failing to provide health care to 29.3 million people is “unethical” and “politically wrong, morally wrong,” said former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in an interview with the Guardian.
The U.S. is the only wealthy country without universal coverage — and Ban faults “powerful” interest groups within the pharmaceutical, hospitals, and doctors sector.
“Here, the political interest groups are so, so powerful,” Ban said. “Even president, Congress,...
GOP senate candidate vows to protect people with pre-existing conditions while doing the opposite
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who is currently running for Senate against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), put out an ad Monday afternoon touting his commitment to protecting people with pre-existing conditions, despite currently working as part of a lawsuit that aims to end protections for pre-existing conditions.
“We’ve got two perfect little boys. Just ask their mama,” Hawley says in the ad, which his campaign shared on Twitter Monday. “Earlier this ...