McSally wants to protect pre-existing conditions, despite voting record

PHOENIX — The Republican candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, Martha McSally, committed to making sure that people with pre-existing conditions are covered by insurance, despite her past voting record that demonstrated otherwise.

McSally, joined by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, spoke to KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News on Wednesday, with less than a week to go until the Nov. 6 election.

When asked if she was willing to sacrifice coverage for pre-existing conditions if it meant repealing Obamacare, U.S.’s health care system, McSally committed to protecting people with pre-existing conditions.

“We need to protect people with pre-existing conditions and I am committed to making sure that insurance companies are forced to cover people with pre-existing conditions and I voted for that,” she said. “We cannot go back to the past.”

During her time in the U.S. House of Representatives, McSally has a history of voting against covering people with pre-existing conditions, which could include anything from sleep apnea to pregnancy to cancer.

The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, prohibited practices that allowed insurers to deny coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions and allowed them to charge higher premiums based on health status.

McSally, according to Politifact, voted for a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2015 and voted in favor of the American Health Care Act, also known as a “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, in 2017.

Both bills passed in the House but failed in the Senate, most notably after Sen. John McCain’s dramatic “no” vote in July 2017.

While the intentions of Obamacare were good, McSally said, “the model of how they did it was poor, and it has failed.

“It’s a federal government, top-down, one size fits all, a trillion dollars in taxes, $700 billion robbed from Medicare and the individual health care market has failed under Obamacare,” she added.

But McSally did not propose a specific solution to repealing Obamacare while protecting those with pre-existing conditions.

“Moving forward — it’s a complicated issue, health care — but just know I’m going to roll up my sleeves like I do with everything and I’m going to protect people as we work toward better solutions that provide more options at a lower cost to people so they have more choices for them and their families,” she said.

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