Liz Cheney: 'Big Lie' Is GOP Opposes Pre-Existing Conditions Protections

House Republican chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) told Breitbart News Daily on Friday that Democrats continue to propagate the “big lie” that Republicans want to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, despite the numerous times Republicans voted to protect Americans who have these conditions.

Rep. Cheney spoke with Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow regarding a report that detailed how President Donald Trump’s administration granted the Association of American Retired Persons (AARP) more than $111 million in a variety of taxpayer-funded grants and contracts, despite data privacy concerns for seniors, AARP’s profiting off of denying seniors with pre-existing conditions, and its opposition to the Trump tax cuts and Obamacare repeal proposals.

Cheney said that the report is “certainly troubling” and that AARP has an “obligation if they are going to continue to market themselves as a source of objective information.”

“People deserve to have balanced, fair, and accurate information, and if AARP is collecting people’s data and using it for political purposes, I think they clearly have to be held accountable for that,” Cheney added.

Further, the Wyoming Republican added that the Democrats’ repeated claim that the GOP wants to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions amounts to a “great lie,” and Republicans need to dispell this rumor. In contrast, Cheney said that Democrats’ Medicare for All proposal would jeopardize Medicare for millions of seniors.

Cheney said, “I think it’s hugely important that we, number one, make clear, again, again, and again, when the Democrats say that Republicans do not want to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Every time you hear that, you ought to think to yourself, that is the ‘big lie’; it is absolutely not true. We have voted in this Congress to protect people with pre-existing conditions, we voted previously to do it, the president has been clear about it, it’s the ‘big lie,’ and the Democrats have been going to try to distract and got to make sure that’s the case. And what the Democrats want to do is this thing called ‘Medicare for All,’ which would be Medicare for none.”

Democrats have often claimed that Republican proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, even though the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Senate Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), and the Graham-Cassidy block-grant repeal proposal did not touch any pre-existing protections, such as community rating or guaranteed issue.

Several senators, including Sens. Tom Tillis (R-NC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Rick Scott (R-FL), David Perdue (R-GA), and Joni Ernst (R-IA), co-sponsored Tillis’s Protect Act this week, which would protect Americans with pre-existing conditions.

“It is absolutely necessary that we protect people with pre-existing conditions. This is personal for me. I remember my mom, who didn’t have insurance, struggling to find care for my brother, who had a serious disease,” Sen. Scott said in a press release this week. “She eventually found a charity hospital four hours away, where he could get treatment.”

“They’re the ones putting Medicare for the folks that are receiving that at absolute complete risk, and Republicans won’t stand for it,” Cheney charged.

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