{"id":1687,"date":"2017-07-19T18:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T18:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/democrats.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/19\/coward-of-the-day-senator-dean-heller\/"},"modified":"2017-07-19T18:09:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T18:09:00","slug":"coward-of-the-day-senator-dean-heller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/coward-of-the-day-senator-dean-heller\/","title":{"rendered":"Coward of The Day: Senator Dean Heller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to his vote yesterday to advance health care repeal, today Senator Heller said he would also support a vote that would allow Congressional Republicans to craft a final repeal package behind closed doors and strip health care away from millions of Americans. &nbsp; Senator Heller has broken his promises and completely abandoned the people he is supposed to represent. For putting politics ahead of the livelihoods of Nevadans, Senator Heller is today&rsquo;s coward of the day:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Senator Heller said today that he thought he would support skinny repeal.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/burgessev\/status\/890232180449972224\">Heller<\/a> on skinny repeal: &#8220;we&#39;ll see at the end of the day what&#39;s in it, <strong>but overall I think I&#39;d support it.<\/strong>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Skinny repeal would cause millions to lose their insurance, premiums to increase, and would send insurance markets into a &ldquo;death spiral.&rdquo; It would also lead to a conference committee with House Republicans who voted to gut Medicaid.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/senate-republicans-bcra-vote_us_5977f7dfe4b0a8a40e83a2d4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huffington Post<\/a>: &ldquo;The skinny repeal, while a less robust piece of legislation, would still manage to do much of the same. The CBO has previously said that similar legislation&nbsp;<strong>would lead to 15 million fewer people with health insurance and 20 percent premium increases<\/strong>. The legislation would, in short, produce the sort of death spiral that Republicans accuse Obamacare of producing.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/health-care\/2017\/7\/25\/16026344\/republican-health-care-bill-skinny-repeal-cartoon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vox<\/a>: &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s a reason why repealing only the individual mandate is a bad idea:&nbsp;<strong>It would likely destroy the individual market, in a process health care experts call the &lsquo;death spiral.<\/strong>&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/07\/25\/obamacare-repeal-what-next-240965\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Politico<\/a>: &ldquo;Basically no senators will like it &mdash; but they may vote for it just to keep the repeal drive going. Passing a skinny bill would enable the Senate to negotiate with the House on a compromise package that can clear both chambers. But it&rsquo;s not clear that even that stripped-down package can garner the 50 votes from Republicans needed to pass.&nbsp;<strong>Nor is it clear that a deal can be struck with the House, which voted for a far more sweeping repeal and replace package,<\/strong> <strong>including the Medicaid changes and state waivers that could wipe out Obamacare patient protections for people with health conditions<\/strong>.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Senator Heller previously promised his constituents that he would not &ldquo;pull the rug out from under states like Nevada that expanded Medicaid&rdquo; and that their health coverage would improve.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/04\/us\/politics\/health-care-bill-vote.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Senator Heller<\/a>: &ldquo;&rsquo;<strong>We cannot pull the rug out from under states like Nevada that expanded Medicaid<\/strong>, and we need assurances that people with pre-existing conditions will be protected,&rsquo; said Senator Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, who is up for re-election next year.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/23\/us\/politics\/health-care-bill-senate.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Senator Heller<\/a>: &ldquo;And while Mr. Heller has called for repealing the Affordable Care Act &mdash; a promise that thrills the Republican base &mdash; he has also, like many of his colleagues,&nbsp;<strong>consistently reassured voters that their health coverage would improve under a Republican alternative<\/strong>.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/03\/dean-heller-obamacare-republicans-235978\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Senator Heller<\/a>: &ldquo;Still, Heller took a far softer tack than the law&rsquo;s staunchest opponents, frequently speaking of making &lsquo;changes&rsquo; to Obamacare rather than eviscerating the law as some Republicans say they will do. He made no commitment to support the House-led effort to repeal the law, which could come before the Senate this month.&nbsp; &lsquo;Not everything in the Affordable Care Act is bad,&rsquo; Heller told the crowd in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, as protesters demonstrated outside. &lsquo;<strong>As we move forward and take a look at some of these changes and what&rsquo;s occurring, I think we ought to embrace what&rsquo;s good in the Affordable Care Act.&rsquo;<\/strong>&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to his vote yesterday to advance health care repeal, today Senator Heller said he would also support a vote that would allow Congressional Republicans to craft a final repeal package behind closed doors and strip health care away from millions of Americans. &nbsp; Senator Heller has broken his promises and completely abandoned the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - 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