CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Full repeal is not what the Affordable Care Act needs, in the view of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
“You’ve got to get off of the wording and definition of ‘repeal.’ Let’s start talking about fixing and repairing,” Manchin said on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Now pending in the U.S. Senate is the proposed American Health Care Act the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed last week with a 217-213 vote.
At this point, there is no timeline for a Senate vote. By many accounts, though, the bill will see “significant” changes in the U.S. Senate.
“The House bill is not going to come before us,” predicted U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) on ABC’s “This Week.” The Senate, she said, would be “starting from scratch.”
As currently written, the ACA individual mandate for health insurance is set to expire retroactive to Dec. 31, 2015 along with the tax penalties assessed annually for not having coverage.
Income-based subsidies currently available to people buying health insurance on ACA exchanges are to be replaced with tax credits determined by age and income.
The House bill allows states to apply for waivers from meeting essential health benefit requirements for coverage currently in the Affordable Care Act, like emergency, maternity and mental health care.
Protections for people with pre-existing conditions are lifted while $8 billion is designated for funding high-risk insurance pools at state levels.
Medicaid, which currently covers about 30 percent of West Virginians, is in for cuts. The Medicaid expansion, implemented under ACA, would end in 2019.
The use of special budget rules, through a planned budget reconciliation, in the U.S. Senate requires a simply majority vote, blocking Democrats from a filibuster, but it may also limit what’s included within the legislation.
U.S. Senate action will wait on bill scoring, an assessment of costs, from the Congressional Budget Office, a step that was not taken with the final version of AHCA in the U.S. House.
Manchin asked, “How do you vote for something if you don’t know what it’s going to cost or what effect it’s going to have on the economy, who’s paying for it or you just keep throwing caution to the wind?”
Earlier scoring indicated, if the bill became law, 24 million more Americans would be without health insurance by 2026.
Republicans hold 52 seats in the U.S. Senate.
At this point, Manchin said 13 Republicans are part of a group working to redraft the legislation.
“I am willing, able and ready to sit down and look at this thing,” Manchin said.
Bipartisanship should be the goal, he told Hoppy Kercheval.
“Democrats made a horrible mistake in 2009 by passing it with 60 Democrat votes and not one Republican vote. Our friends on the Republican side haven’t learn a thing from our mistake.”
Last week, 1st District Congressman David McKinley (R-W.Va.), 2nd District Congressman Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and 3rd District Congressman Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) voted for the proposed AHCA in the U.S. House.
Jenkins said it was “a tough call.”
Members of the Women’s March, West Virginia Chapter held events Monday at congressional offices across the state to protest the U.S. House’s vote to repeal the ACA.
Katherine Broadwater, outreach captain for Women’s March in Charleston, joined a few others outside Manchin’s Charleston office.
“I’m not going to beg for my life,” Broadwater told MetroNews standing along Pennsylvania Avenue. “What I’m going to do is knock on every single door and tell everyone the name of the opposition to whoever votes for the health care bill that takes away my health care.”
Broadwater said she knows Obamacare needs to be repaired, not replaced.
“I think health care does need reformed right now. That’s absolutely legitimate, but the second you stop covering pre existing conditions, we have a major, serious problem and I’m not going to let them take that away from me,” she said.
The protest was held as part of National Women’s March’s Pledge of Liberation Action. Broadwater, who said she marched in Washington, D.C. after President Trump was sworn into office, read a letter to Manchin’s staff Monday.
The letter addressed rollbacks and cuts to women’s rights such as ending sexual violence, treating female workers with more respect, ending poverty as well as pro-choice issues, to name a few.
“We’re fighting for issues that often time get ignored because often times women get ignored,” she said.
Demonstrations were also held Monday at U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito’s (R-W.Va.) Beckley Office, the Foxcroft Office Center in Martinsburg and Third District Congressman Evan Jenkins’ Huntington Office (R-W.Va.).