Republican Candidates Play Defense Over Health Care

Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California backed the unsuccessful GOP effort last year to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act, which guarantees coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Now, in a bruising race against Democratic challenger Harley Rouda, Mr. Rohrabacher’s ads promise he will “protect America’s health care system,” stressing in particular his support for patients with such conditions.

Many Republicans, who swept to recent electoral victories by vowing to topple the ACA, are urgently seeking to reassure voters they want to save these protections. Mr. Rohrabacher says he is “taking on both parties” in an effort to do so; his challenger says the congressman is “falling all over himself to scrub his records on health care.”

Such fights are leading to sometimes bitter races across the country involving the ACA, enacted in 2010 under Democratic President Barack Obama. About half of all Democratic campaign ads—roughly 345,400—had a health-care message through Sept. 30, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data. About a quarter of those discussed pre-existing conditions, according to Kantar, an advertising tracking service.

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Polls suggest Republicans are at a disadvantage on health issues for the first time in years. “They are more vulnerable,” said Robert Blendon, a political analyst and health policy professor at Harvard University. “What’s happened is that pre-existing conditions has gone from being a technical issue to an emotional one.” About 130 million non-elderly people in the U.S. suffer from an existing medical condition, and a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 75% of voters consider it “very important” that the ACA’s provision guaranteeing such coverage remains law.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-candidates-play-defense-over-health-care-1539860400 (paid subscription)

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Here, locally, hard right candidates do mention pre-existing conditions.