A new, independent fact check from PolitiFact North Carolina succinctly exposed Senator Tillis’ disastrous record of voting to gut protections for preexisting conditions: “Is it true that Tillis voted to take away coverage for people with pre-existing conditions? Yes.”

Despite trying to run from his record on gutting protections for pre-existing conditions, Senator Tillis “voted to repeal a law, the Affordable Care Act, that provides that coverage.” In fact, “repealing and replacing the ACA has been part of the Tillis platform for years.”

As WRAL reporter Cullen Browder said, “If the repeal had been successful, insurers could have legally denied coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.”

Senator Tillis understands this is a major vulnerability for him, which is why he has tried to paper over his record with his own sham bill. But, according to the new fact check, “experts say that bill falls short.”

According to those experts, Tillis’ bill would either force providers to “leave the market entirely or dramatically increase premiums to cover a very sick and expensive group of people,” meaning that “insurance will be too expensive for individuals who are in good health to purchase.” Tillis’ bill could even allow “companies to deny certain coverage.”

This isn’t the first time experts have panned Tillis’ transparent attempt to cover up a political vulnerability rather than provide meaningful coverage for North Carolinians. Editorial boards exposed it as “false promise,” reports found it is nothing more than “political cover,” and experts have warned it “would do little to protect people with pre-existing conditions.”

“Senator Tillis can run but he can’t hide from his past votes to gut protections for pre-existing conditions,” NCDP spokesman Robert Howard said. “North Carolinians aren’t fooled by Tillis’ false promises. They know that their health care will not be safe until Senator Tillis is out of office.”

PolitiFact: Fact check: Did Tillis vote to ‘take away’ coverage for pre-existing conditions?
By Paul Specht
February 27, 2020

Key Points:

• Is it true that Tillis voted to take away coverage for people with pre-existing conditions? Yes. Tillis voted to repeal a law, the Affordable Care Act, that provides that coverage.

• While repeal efforts have been unsuccessful, repealing and replacing the ACA has been part of the Tillis platform for years. He voted to repeal the ACA, and later proposed a different law that aims to address pre-existing conditions.

• But experts say the Tillis plan, along with other Republican proposals, fall short of offering the coverage in the ACA.

• Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, insurers could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or inflate their premiums so much that they dropped coverage, as PolitiFact and its partners have previously reported.

• [The ad] specifically mentions a vote from July 26, 2015: the roll call for a vote to allow the repeal of the health care law.

• The record shows Tillis voted to repeal it.

• “Certainly, this provision, if enacted, would have removed coverage of pre-existing conditions because it would have repealed the ACA in its entirety, which would have restored law to what it was prior to 2010, when pre-existing conditions often were not covered in most states, or by federal law,” said Mark Hall, a law and health professor at Wake Forest University.

• PolitiFact has repeatedly determined that a vote to repeal the ACA in full would have stripped coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Subsequent GOP-written bills to replace the ACA have not ensured the same level of patients with those conditions.

• Under Tillis’ bill, Anderson said there was little incentive to keep healthy people in the market pool. So insurers would have two options.

• “They can either leave the market entirely or dramatically increase premiums to cover a very sick and expensive group of people,” he said. “Since there are no premium subsidies in this bill, insurance will be too expensive for individuals who are in good health to purchase.”

• PolitiFact reported in 2019 that most of the Republican health care plans fail to fully protect people with pre-existing conditions. A fact-check of White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney singled out the plan proposed by Tillis and other Republican senators. It found that the bill included an option for companies to deny certain coverage if they weren’t able to “adequately” deliver services.

• That fact-check quote critics of Obamacare, such as health care consultant Bob Laszewski and former Republican Senate health care policy staffer Rodney Whitlock, saying the Republican proposals fall short of the coverage offered by the ACA.

• Cunningham’s ad says Tillis voted to take away coverage for pre-existing conditions. It’s true that Tillis voted for a straight repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a move that likely would have left Americans with pre-existing conditions vulnerable.

• But experts agree that the Tillis proposal left loopholes insurance companies could use to avoid coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

• But it’s correct about Tillis’ vote and the fact that other Republican plans fall short of matching the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. We rate it Mostly True.