RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel praised the House health care legislation during an event in her home state of Michigan
Lansing – This week’s controversial U. S. House vote to overhaul the nation’s health care system won’ t hurt congressional Republicans in 2018, and it will help the American people, national party chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said Friday.
McDaniel touted the health care legislation during a return trip to her home state, praising “the courageous act of the Republican Party” to fix what she called a broken health care law enacted under former President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
“It’s unfortunate that Democrats have continued to ignore the failures of Obamacare, ” McDaniel said, pointing to Wednesday’s announcement that a major health insurer is pulling out of Virginia. “Republicans stepped up and said we have to fix this before it fails, and we have to find relief for American families.”
Democrats bemoaned Thursday’s vote, arguing millions of Americans would lose their health care coverage and that the legislation would jeopardize guaranteed coverage by allowing states to seek waivers to allow insurers to charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing illnesses who let their coverage lapse.
Southwest Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, won an amendment adding another $8 billion in funding to $130 billion for high-risk pools in states that seek the federal waivers. But critics questioned whether the amendment does enough to protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and activists protested Upton outside his Kalamazoo office on Thursday, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.
Democrats argue the health care vote could come back to haunt House Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections. Some even went so far as to sing “na na na, hey hey, goodbye” on the House floor when it became clear the bill was going to pass and head to the Senate, where it could undergo significant revisions.
Republicans like Upton, Rep. Mike Bishop of Rochester Hills and Rep. Walberg of Tipton “must face the music, look his constituents in the eye and answer for the mess they created, ” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Ben Ray Lujan said in a series of statements targeting each Michigan lawmaker.
“There is no question that this bill will cause incredible pain for hardworking Americans, particularly those fighting to make ends meet, and this vote will haunt Bishop through Election Day.”
But McDaniel and Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser dismissed the suggestion of political repercussions in 2018 and argued the health care overhaul would ultimately improve the health care system.
“The Democrats’ singing yesterday was really out of tune, as they are out of tune with the American people, ” said Weiser, who replaced McDaniel as state party chair this year after she left for the Republican National Committee.
The GOP officials were in Lansing for a roundtable Hispanic business roundtable marking Cinco De Mayo. McDaniel said she wants to “start a conversation” with Hispanic voters despite continued angst over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and plans for a border wall between Mexico.
Trump tapped McDaniel for the RNC chair position in mid-December, calling her efforts “critical” to his 2016 campaign victory in Michigan – the first by a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He topped Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes.
McDaniel officially won election as national party chair in January, replacing Reince Priebus, who left to become the new president’s chief of staff. She has used the high-profile position to tout Trump policies on national news programs and in April announced the RNC had raised $41.5 million in the first quarter of 2017 – its largest-ever haul in the first three months following a presidential election.
Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, pushed for a floor vote this week on the health care legislation even though the Congressional Budget Office had not yet finished its evaluation of the latest version of the bill.
Its analysis of an earlier draft estimated individual premiums would initially rise but be 10 percent lower by 2026 than under current law. The nonpartisan office also projected 14 million fewer Americans would have health insurance in 2018. That number would climb to 24 million by 2026, largely due to changes in Medicaid financing for states like Michigan that expanded eligibility under the current law.
“People are interpreting that as they’ re going to lose” health care, Romney McDaniel said. “Actually, what’s happening is they’ re being given a choice. They’ re going to leave the program to go and find better insurance in other markets.”
If it becomes law, the GOP plan would gut the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which requires most people to have insurance or face a tax penalty. It would also change the financing of Medicaid — the government program for low-income Americans — from an open-ended program that covers patient costs to one that caps federal contributions to states.
All nine Michigan Republicans supported the legislation, including Rep. Justin Amash of the Grand Rapids area, who had strongly opposed an earlier version of the bill. Michigan’s five Democrats voted no.
The health care bill faces a larger hurdle in the Senate, but McDaniel said she expects Congress and Trump will get the job done.
“What you saw yesterday were Republicans coming together, ” she said. “… They’ re going to continue to do that. I’ m very confident that the Senate’s going to come up with a meaningful solution for the American people.”
