Sen. Hoeven hides from his party’s cruel health care bill; Rep. Cramer lies about it

(BISMARCK, ND) – Senator John Hoeven and Rep. Kevin Cramer are each responding in their own way to yesterday’s report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showing just how cruel the Republican health care plan really is: Hoeven has gone into hiding, and Cramer has decided to simply lie about it.

Following the CBO report, Senator Hoeven, in an unsurprisingly evasive and cagey statement, refused to take a position on the bill, saying only that the report “indicates this legislation needs additional work.”  

Even though the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation confirmed that, on average, North Dakotans would see their premiums increase by 76 percent under the Senate health care bill compared to current law, Cramer continues to debate facts. He went on national television and repeated flat-out falsehoods that, “People aren’t going to lose their health care.” This, despite the CBO showing that over 20 million people would lose their health care, and private-market insurance options would be substantially more expensive while offering skimpier levels of coverage.

To recap, yesterday’s CBO report on the Senate bill shows the following:

– 22 million Americans would lose their health insurance, including 15 million next year alone.

– 4 million Americans would lose their employer-based coverage in 2018 alone.

– Nearly 45 percent of tax cuts in the Senate bill would go to the top 1 percent (those making over $875,000), according to the Tax Policy Center.

Responding to Hoeven and Cramer, Democratic-NPL executive director Robert Haider said the following:

“Senator Hoeven is hiding yet again so that he doesn’t have to defend himself to the North Dakotans who will be harmed by his refusal to protect their health care. And Kevin Cramer is lying yet again in an attempt to deceive North Dakotans about his vote to take away health coverage from millions of Americans while raising premiums for those of us who do get to keep our insurance. These circumstances would be sad if they weren’t so predictable.

The delay on the vote on the Senate health care bill reinforces why North Dakotans must continue to tell Hoeven and Cramer why this bill would be bad for our state, as they have been doing. We need to make sure any bill Congress passes actually works for North Dakota – and this bill absolutely does not.”