Republican Issues (Sean Parnell)

THE ISSUES

PROTECT PA JOBS

I will fight to keep taxes as low as possible, protecting your earnings and your freedom, and slash regulations to get DC off the necks of Pennsylvania job creators.

I’m from a union family and understand how important unions have been to middle-class families in Pennsylvania. I will always support middle-class working families and defend their rights in the workplace.

After decades of being beholden to OPEC, we are finally energy independent. A net energy exporter, in fact. We need to keep it this way. Fracking creates jobs and keeps us free. I will support Pennsylvania’s energy workers – and I won’t let my party betray them.

FIGHTING FOR VETERANS

Our veterans are the best of us. When they raise their right hand and volunteer to serve our great nation, they do so knowing that they may give their lives in defense of our freedom. When our veterans come home from distant battlefields, they deserve to be thanked on behalf of a grateful nation, but that gratitude must not stop there. Our leaders need to work relentlessly on their behalf to ensure they’re given a fair deal on the home front. They fought for us; now it’s our turn as American citizens to fight for them.

I will never forget the dedication and sacrifice of our nation’s warriors. Veterans who fought and bled for this country should not have to fight and bleed for the healthcare and benefits they were promised. Veterans willingly chose to serve this nation during a time of war; they deserve the right to choose where to get their healthcare. If you like the care you receive at the VA, great. You can keep it. If you don’t, then it should be your right as a veteran to choose where you want to go.

Veterans who deploy to defend the streets of America should not have to return home to sleep on them. I will fight to ensure our veterans stay off the streets and in jobs where they can provide for their families and live the American Dream that they bled to protect.

Election Integrity

As we look at what happened in 2020, we need to work to make sure the voters never again have a reason not to have faith in our electoral process. We need to increase transparency and security to prevent voter fraud by making sure signature verification is taking place on mail-in ballots and promoting stability in the process. There should be no changes by unelected bureaucrats or activist judges within 60 days of the election. Our election workers have a great deal of responsibility and changing the rules of the game on them by proclamation within 60 days places unnecessary burdens on them.

SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT

There are those who spend their time and energy trying to tear our police officers down. They attack them for the uniform they wear. They use their positions of power to advocate for defunding the police and demonizing them, while every day, our police walk out their door to keep the people of their communities safe from those that wish to do us harm.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

America is still the greatest nation in the history of the world. While the radical left is trying to silence free speech, transform our institutions, and roll back our constitutional rights, I will always fight to defend the country I love.

Strengthening our military

As someone who has served in fierce combat, I know firsthand the importance of making sure our troops are supported and well-funded. We need to ensure our military is the strongest fighting force in the world and is used to defend Americans from our enemies, NOT to police every corner of the earth. At the same time, we need to be fully funding our military budget. China and Russia are not backing down, and we need to be prepared to defend ourselves should the need arise.

SECond amendment

“…The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed…” I will fight like hell to protect the right to keep and bear arms, and I reject the notion that society is somehow guilty because a criminal commits a crime. We do not need more gun control laws, we need to enforce the laws we have and give resources to those whose job is to enforce those laws.

HEALTHCARE

I have a pre-existing condition. This is personal to me. I will always protect people with pre-existing conditions and make sure they have the same access to quality health care.

I want Americans to have the freedom to choose a healthcare plan that fits their needs. The best way to drive healthcare costs down is to get people jobs, allow insurance companies to compete across state lines, and allow small companies to band together to get lower rates.

I will defend the good health benefits Pennsylvania’s labor unions have won through negotiation – and fight the liberals who try to take these benefits away.

I believe the more insurance companies have to compete for your business, the more affordable healthcare will be, and it will ultimately empower all Americans to pick a customizable plan that works best for them.

IMMIGRATION

Securing the border is a national security issue, it’s an illegal drugs and guns issue, and it’s a human trafficking issue. We need leaders to admit this is a crisis. President Biden’s failure to acknowledge the problem he created shows the lack of sincerity in addressing our nation’s border security.

If there are members of either party that are serious about fixing our immigration system, I will gladly work with them. But first, we must secure the border.

I will stand up against those who want to open our border and continue to allow for policies like sanctuary cities that circumvent federal law to exist. Those positions are out of step with what the majority of Pennsylvanians believe, and I will always put Pennsylvania first.

fight for the unborn & the supreme court

I am pro-life, and will always vote to protect the unborn. As a US Senator, I will vote to confirm judges who share that view. I will strongly support pieces of legislation like the Born Alive Act, and believe Joe Biden’s decision to revoke the Mexico City policy undermines our moral leadership worldwide.

I disagree with packing the court or confirming justices that will legislate from the bench. We are a country of laws, and the judiciary should enforce them as they are written, not create policy.

SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE

It’s simple, Social Security and Medicare should be protected. People have paid into the program their whole lives, and at the end of the day, they have earned it, and they deserve their Social Security and Medicare at retirement.

Some of Trump’s Most Devious Lies Are About Health Care

What the administration says it’s doing and what it’s actually doing on health care are worlds apart.

As Democrats debate the best way to achieve universal coverage and lower health care costs, the Trump administration has a different approach to the challenges of our current system. It’s working overtime to make the system more fragile for the sick and the poor, even as it misrepresents to Congress and the American public what it’s up to.

Speaking to reporters in late October, President Trump said that “we have a great Republican plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act. “Much less expensive. Deductibles will be much lower.” His statements came on the heels of a congressional hearing in which one of his top health officials, Seema Verma, said that the administration would do “everything we can” for Americans with pre-existing conditions. Under oath, she swore that the administration was aiming to help people find a pathway out of poverty.

None of this is true.

Far from supporting protections for people with pre-existing conditions, the Trump administration has thrown its weight behind a lawsuit seeking to topple the Affordable Care Act. In court filings, if not in its public statements, the administration is clear about what it wants done to the law: “The proper course is to strike it down in its entirety.”

If the lawsuit succeeds, protections for people with pre-existing conditions would be wiped from the books. Overnight, we’d be back in a world where private insurers could discriminate against the sick.

Good luck getting Congress to pass one. Though Republicans have no shortage of white papers endorsing controversial reform plans — the Republican Study Committee, a group of legislators, recently released another one — they’ve never been able to coalesce around a piece of actual legislation.

And the bills that are most popular among Republicans don’t actually protect sick people. During the repeal-and-replace debate in 2017, for example, the leading replacement bill would have increased the number of uninsured by 23 million over a decade. For the sick, deductibles would have gone up, not down.

In the meantime, the Trump administration is trying to sabotage the exchanges. A new rule that took effect last month will exploit a loophole in the law allowing for the sale of “short term” health plans.

Originally meant to serve as a stopgap for those with temporary breaks in coverage, short-term plans discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and usually exclude vital protections, including prescription drugs and maternity care. They’re cheap — but you get what you pay for.

Now, under the new rule, plans that last for 364 days out of 365 can qualify as “short term.” As relatively healthy people who like the low price tag leave the exchanges to buy short-term coverage, the pool of people left on the exchanges will be relatively sicker. Prices will surge by an average of 18 percent in most states, according to researchers at the Urban Institute.

Already, unscrupulous brokers are using high-pressure tactics to sell short-term plans over the phone. Internet searches for “Obamacare plans” or “ACA enroll” will usually direct people to brokers selling short-term plans, not comprehensive coverage. Many of those people will be in for a rude shock when they get sick and discover how little their insurance actually covers.

There’s more. Earlier this year, a low-profile rule change reduced the subsidies for people who buy health insurance through the exchanges. President Trump’s own health officials recommended against the change because it “would cause coverage losses, further premium increases, and market disruption.” But the White House approved the cut anyway, and 70,000 people are expected to lose coverage as a result.

At the same time, the Trump administration is laboring to tear health care from the poor. In its most galling move, it has been allowing states to add work requirements to Medicaid. To date, 18 states (most Republican controlled) have sought to impose work requirements, though Kentucky is likely to drop the request after Gov. Matt Bevin’s apparent loss last week.

Work requirements poll well: If you’re getting benefits on the government’s dime, shouldn’t you be expected to pull your own weight? But they are a policy nightmare. Fully 60 percent of those who are subject to work requirements already work. Of those who don’t, the overwhelming majority are in school, disabled or caring for dependents. There just aren’t that many people on Medicaid who can work but have chosen not to.

That’s why work requirements can’t stimulate much new employment. Every Medicaid beneficiary who’s subject to the requirements, however, has to jump through the bureaucratic hoops of attesting to their work status. Desperately poor people who lack the bandwidth or the wherewithal to comply will lose health coverage because they can’t manage the paperwork.

Experience in Arkansas bears the point out. More than 18,000 people, or nearly one in four Medicaid beneficiaries subject to work requirements, lost coverage in the first seven months of the program. A careful study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that “lack of awareness and confusion about the reporting requirements were common.” Employment rates didn’t budge.

Losing Medicaid isn’t a pathway out of poverty. It’s a pathway to destitution. A randomized trial out of Oregon, for example, shows that getting Medicaid eliminated catastrophic medical bills and cut in half the rates of people who had to borrow money or skip other bills to pay for health care. Recent research also shows that Medicaid sharply reduces evictions.

Attacks on the poor go beyond work requirements. For decades, Title X has offered grants for family planning services — including contraception and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases — for low-income women and families. In February, however, the Trump administration eliminated funding for any organization that refers patients for abortions.

The change was a deliberate effort to target Planned Parenthood, which, through its large network of clinics, serves about 40 percent of the women receiving help through Title X. Planned Parenthood has since withdrawn from the program, with the predictable result that poor women, especially those in rural areas, will face new barriers to receiving care.

Mr. Trump is even using health care as a weapon in his immigration war. Most legal immigrants are eligible for Medicaid once they’ve lived in the United States for more than five years, and millions have enrolled. But in a new “public charge” rule, originally set to take effect this month, the administration said that it would start denying citizenship to immigrants who are on Medicaid.

The courts have enjoined the rule for now; one judge said it was “repugnant to the American dream.” If the rule takes effect, however, millions of poor immigrants — every one of whom is legally present in the United States — will lose coverage.

So ignore what the Trump administration says. Pay attention to what it’s doing. It’s working to eliminate protections for the sick, destabilize the exchanges, and strip insurance from the poor. That’s the ugly truth.

Trump’s Attacks on Health Care Will Backfire

The administration’s chaotic reversals on Obamacare could deprive millions of coverage.

Meanwhile, the administration’s latest budget, released in mid-March, stands behind legislation known as “Graham-Cassidy,” which was pushed by Republicans in 2017 but never won enough support to be brought to a vote.

The Trojan horse of health care reform, the proposal provides for relatively small initial cuts in federal funding and then huge reductions starting in 2027.

According to a Brookings Institution report, Graham-Cassidy would cost 32 million Americans their health insurance by 2027, just as full repeal would. That’s Donald Trump’s idea of a “beautiful,” “terrific” and “unbelievable” health care plan.

.. The administration’s recent decision to submit a brief in a Texas case asking the court to declare all of Obamacare unconstitutional was well publicized.

Slipping by almost unnoticed was Mr. Trump’s instruction last June to the Justice Department, which was defending the A.C.A., to argue instead that certain key provisions — notably, the requirement that Americans with pre-existing conditions be treated equally — be declared unconstitutional.

A win by Mr. Trump in this case could mean that nearly 20 million Americans would lose insurance, according to the Urban Institute.

The Individual Mandate Is Here to Stay

The basic economics of U.S. health care makes that easier said than done. Before the ACA, the U.S. stood out from the international pack on health care in two very unpleasant ways. First, it spent a far larger share of gross domestic product on health care. Second, it was the only advanced industrial nation that left vast swaths of its population uninsured. These two doleful facts remain true, although the fraction of Americans without health insurance fell from 13.3% in 2013 to 8.8% in 2017, according to Commerce Department data.

There are several ways to get more people covered. One is to adopt a system in which the government provides or pays for universal coverage—the British or Canadian model. This won’t happen soon in the U.S., not even as Medicare for All.

A second route, advocated unsuccessfully by President Clinton in 1993, is to mandate that every employer provide health insurance to its workers. This approach might seem natural in the U.S. context because so many workers already receive health insurance that way. But the employer mandate has fatal flaws. It wouldn’t cover the nonworking population, and it would impose heavy burdens on small businesses.

For these and other reasons, many economists in the Clinton administration—including me—favored an individual mandate. But that idea was dead in the water in 1993 because it had been advocated by the Heritage Foundation starting in 1989. It was therefore a “right wing” idea.

There are problems with an individual mandate, too. For one, the high cost of U.S. health insurance means that many low- and moderate-income families cannot afford to buy policies on their own. For another, if for-profit insurance companies are made to lose money by covering people with pre-existing conditions, the government must also force young healthy people, who tend to have limited medical expenses, into the insurance pool.

Fortunately, both problems are easily solved—conceptually, that is, not politically—by mandating that everyone buy a policy and providing subsidies to the needy. Massachusetts legislators understood this in 2006. They also knew they were not writing on a blank slate; many citizens received health insurance through their jobs and didn’t want to lose it. Hence the hybrid system that became known as RomneyCare.

If this short description reminds you of the ACA, it should. The two plans are not identical twins, but there is a family resemblance. In 2010 Democrats didn’t follow in the footsteps of Romney Republicans to make them look good; they designed their plan that way because under the constraints of precedent, the underlying logic practically forces you there.

Keep that in mind: If there ever is a TrumpCare, an unlikely proposition, it’s bound to resemble RomneyCare and ObamaCare—no matter what the president claims.