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McConnell calls on more debate of 2 ACA plans
By STEVE BINDER
Illinois Correspondent
 
 WASHINGTON, D.C. — While Senate GOP leaders say they’ll push for further debate this week and possibly vote on whether to repeal or change the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more and more Americans are saying they favor most of the ACA to remain in place.
 
That includes several Midwest residents who work in agriculture, including southern Illinois grain grower Mike Winchester, married with two children, and Iowa resident Dianna Farence, single and self-employed with her dad’s power- washing company.

According to Gallup polls, barely 40 percent of Americans in 2016 said they believed the ACA, also known as Obamacare, was worth keeping. The same question last month, according to Gallup, showed that 52 percent of Americans believed the ACA should stay in place.

The 48-year-old Winchester, whose children are 14 and 11, said when the ACA was first passed, he didn’t fundamentally believe in the government requiring that everyone have health insurance or face a tax penalty.

“I still have a problem with that basic concept, but what I’ve come to believe is that most people, if they want it, should be able to get insurance without eating into their life savings,” he said. “If they (lawmakers) want to make changes with the law, I’m okay with it as long as they do something that limits the premium increases we’ve had. They’re ridiculous.”

Winchester’s health insurance premium for his family has gone up about 75 percent in the past two years. Despite the cost increase, he said he’s been happy with the health care he’s received under his policy. And so is Farence, who has purchased a health care plan for herself each of the past three years from the national ACA exchange offered for Iowans.

“I have no issues using it or updating any information I had to each year,” Farence said of her experience with the ACA.
 
Farence, 41, works with her father’s company to power-wash hog confinement facilities. She said she pays about $45 a month this year for her health plan, which she has used for a variety of health needs over three years, including consulting with a dietician to help her lose about 90 pounds. “I think the costs are very fair, at least for me. For some they might think it’s not fair because they might think that someone like me should pay even more,” she said.

Both Farence and Winchester believe lawmakers ought to focus now on improving the deficiencies with the ACA rather than see the GOP continue its call to simply repeal it. They both said insurance companies should be allowed to sell policies that don’t require coverage for everything mandated under the ACA’s rules, such as maternity coverage for people “over child-bearing age or are male,” Farence said.

Lawmakers “should be focusing on fixing the problems with the ACA instead of constantly belittling a plan that was initially invented by (former Gov. and GOP presidential candidate) Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Perhaps instead of fighting amongst themselves, they should be working with each other and truly make this a plan that will work for every American,” she added. 
 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he will call on the Senate to begin debate this week on two separate plans – one to repeal the ACA with a twoyear delay to replace it with something else, and one to repeal and replace it with GOP-drafted plan that would end the federal government’s funding of Medicaid expansions in 31 states under the ACA.

Neither plan, heading into this week, appeared to have enough votes to move it out of the Senate, which prompted President Trump to tweet on Friday that the Senate should consider staying in session and not taking its annual August recess.

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) review of the latest Senate measures, about 22 million people would be left without insurance over the next decade, in large part because of Medicaid funding changes suggested in the bill. 
7/26/2017