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Sablan takes aim at new health bill
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) has criticized the newly released Republican healthcare reform legislation for failing to include the U.S. insular areas. The congressman made his comments during mark up yesterday of three smaller healthcare bills in the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
“I had hopes that the Republican replacement would make health care more affordable, more accessible—for all Americans—as advertised,” Sablan said. “Unfortunately, the legislation is not as advertised. It does not fulfill the President’s promise of ‘insurance for everyone.’”
President Donald Trump made “insurance for everyone” one of his signature pledges during last year’s campaign for the White House.
The Republican proposal, released on Monday, is supposed to replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The proposal provides tax credits to assist middle-income individuals purchase health insurance and per-capita funding for the Medicaid insurance program for those with lower incomes.
Only persons in the U.S. states or the District of Columbia are covered, however.
The U.S. insular areas were initially included in the Affordable Care Act, when the U.S. House of Representatives under Democratic control passed the measure in 2009. But the islands—Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Marianas—were dropped from most of the bill in the U.S. Senate, where none of them are represented.
And, later, consumer protections that Obamacare did provide the insular areas—such as the ability for people with a preexisting condition to buy insurance, equal pricing for men and women, reductions in rates for older persons, and the bar on annual and lifetime limits—were taken away at the request of territorial governors and insurance commissioners.
Earlier this year, Sablan led the congressional representatives from the five insular areas—Republicans and Democrats—in setting out their goals for inclusion in a replacement for Obamacare. They asked to be treated as states under the Medicaid program and for people in the insular areas to be eligible for tax credits to pay for the cost of health insurance premiums. (PR)
