It’s the last week of Crooked Cramer’s Chronicles! We’re choosing to spotlight three important issues in North Dakota where Kevin Cramer chose to put himself and his political ambitions above the interests of North Dakota: Social Security and Medicare, health care, and trade.

“EVERYTHING [IS] ON THE TABLE” FOR SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE CUTS. Cramer finally told the truth when he admitted that “everything [is] on the table” when it comes to making changes to Social Security. But after admitting his true intentions, Cramer began backpedaling once again, stating that he doesn’t want to “cut benefits for people currently receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits or for anyone over the age of 55.” Of course, he makes no mention of those North Dakotans who have paid into the program for decades but are 54 years old or younger. Cramer has consistently tried papering over his objective of cutting Social Security and Medicare, earning him the moniker: “one of the best fudge masters in Washington, D.C.”

LISTEN to Marlene, a retired RN from West Fargo who is “very concerned” about Cramer’s rhetoric on Social Security and Medicare and read below:

Marlene: “I really want these programs protected. We’ve paid into these for decades and we want to have them for our generation, but also for future generations.”
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“It makes me very nervous because our Congressman Cramer said he was encouraged to hear Mitch McConnell talk about that – and cutting Social Security and Medicare is going to affect at least one-seventh of North Dakota’s population.”
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“I see workers who are doing physical labor… construction workers. If the age goes 70 or older, they aren’t able to continue their work to that age, they just aren’t physically capable. And that’s true of nurses, too. Nursing is a very physical occupation and that’s where I was, I am a nurse. For people to continue taking care of others, say in a hospital situation, when they’re 70 years old, is pretty devastating.” 

CRAMER’S REAL HEALTH CARE RECORD. Affordable access to health care has become one of the defining issues of this campaign and, in every respect, Kevin Cramer is on the wrong side of North Dakotans. For 53 percent of North Dakotans, Cramer’s vote to repeal the current health care law and undermine protections for folks with pre-existing conditions is a “major concern.” It’s no wonder he’s spent the last year running away from his dangerous health care record. While he tries to make North Dakotans forget, here’s his real record:

❌Cramer voted to repeal the current health care law FIVE times without a replacement.

❌ Cramer voted for the AHCA and supports Graham-Cassidy and bills like ‘skinny repeal,’ all of which could:

• Eliminate federal funding for Medicaid expansion, which has enabled 18,000 North Dakotans to obtain coverage
• Allow insurance companies to charge more for pre-existing conditions coverage
• Allow states to define essential health benefits to not include health conditions like asthma, cancer, or depression
• Implement an ‘Age Tax’ on older North Dakotans ages 50-64

❌ Cramer supports the ill-advised partisan lawsuit that would strike down patient protections in the current law, including eliminating protections for pre-existing conditions.

❌Cramer is so afraid of North Dakotans learning the truth about his health care record that his campaign threatened constituents with physical removal when they tried to attend a ‘Set the Record Straight’ press conference on his health care record.

❌ Because it’s an election year, Cramer is lying about his health care record, trying to convince North Dakotans that he’ll protect their care, but here’s the truth: his record is downright dangerous and North Dakotans will hold him accountable.

His health care lies have earned him multiple fact checks, including a “FALSE” from Politifact just this week:

• Have pre-existing conditions been protected in North Dakota for decades? No. “To suggest there was a complete protection of pre-existing conditions under state or federal law is just not accurate,” said Kevin Lucia, project director at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
• Prior to the ACA, private insurers in the individual market in North Dakota could turn people down because of a pre-existing condition, or exclude coverage for their pre-existing condition.
• First, people who are not HIPAA-eligible have to wait six months before coverage begins for their pre-existing conditions, or nine months if they are pregnant. For a cancer patient, that can be six months too many. HIPAA eligibility is conferred by 18 months of qualifying previous coverage and less than a 63-day gap in coverage.
• Second, the policies cap out at $1 million. “An individual with a serious pre-existing condition could hit that cap pretty quickly and then have no source of coverage after that,” said Wendy Netter Epstein, a law professor at DePaul University.
• Third, premiums can be up to 35 percent more expensive than standard rates. In the individual market in the ACA, there are no lifetime caps and the standard rate is the rate, according to Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. While rates have been on the rise, the ACA offers sliding scale subsidies for people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. 87 percent of marketplace enrollees received subsidies in North Dakota this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• [P]rivate insurers in North Dakota could turn down people in the individual market because of a pre-existing condition prior to the ACA. A 1982 state law provided an alternative, but it was not nearly as strong a guarantee of protection for pre-existing conditions as those provided by the ACA.

Reminder: Cramer was previously caught lying by the Washington Post on another false health care claim.

CRAMER “CAN’T RUN FROM… PAST ACTIONS AGAINST PROTECTIONS FOR PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS.” Cramer can spout election-year spin all he wants but, as Tyler Axness explains, “[s]ix years of action speaks louder than eight months of political speak.” Here are the facts: Cramer’s votes to repeal the current health care law without a replacement and his support for the ill-advised lawsuit that would strike down the current law would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions. It’s that simple.

TONE-DEAF ON TRADE. Since the day China first announced retaliatory tariffs on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods, including soybeans, Cramer has been a loyal lapdog for the administration, putting his political self-interests above North Dakota. What’s worse, he’s bullied anyone and everyone who disagrees with him. See for yourself:

• Cramer accused farmers of being hysterical over the trade war and told them they “don’t have a very high pain threshold.”
• Cramer created a self-imposed deadline of September for when he’d become “concerned” enough to stand with North Dakota against the administration’s reckless trade war. It’s been more than 63 days and Cramer has yet to take meaningful action.
• Cramer’s actions and rhetoric “almost derailed” grain grading trade negotiations with Canada.
• Cramer called Heidi an “enemy of our own country” when she took farmers to visit the Mexican Embassy to discuss trade.

BOTTOM LINE: At every turn, Kevin Cramer will always put himself and his interests, whether they be political or financial, above North Dakota.

TWEET OF THE WEEK.

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(BISMARCK, ND) – Yesterday, Marlene from West Fargo went on KFGO’s News & Views to discuss Congressman Cramer’s intention to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for his budget-busting tax cut for the wealthy. Marlene is a retired RN and a parish nurse. She also acts as caregiver to her husband who has several pre-existing conditions. See key quotes and listen to the full interview below:

On Cutting Social Security and Medicare:

Marlene: “I’ve been very concerned lately about what I’m hearing Congressman Cramer saying regarding Social Security and Medicare.”
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“I really want these programs protected. We’ve paid into these for decades and we want to have them for our generation, but also for future generations.”

Joel: “For me this was the most telling thing, and Senator Mitch McConnell let this slip – the fact that they were talking about a budget deficit, that the tax bill didn’t do what they said it was going to do, which is lower the deficit. In fact it has grown the deficit. Marlene, he said that, once they go back in, one of the first things they’re going to do is work on… entitlements, which really are Social Security and Medicare. Does that make you nervous that they’re going to go after those two things?”

Marlene: “It makes me very nervous because our Congressman Cramer said he was encouraged to hear Mitch McConnell talk about that – and cutting Social Security and Medicare is going to affect at least one-seventh of North Dakota’s population.”
…
“I see workers who are doing physical labor… construction workers. If the age goes 70 or older, they aren’t able to continue their work to that age, they just aren’t physically capable. And that’s true of nurses, too. Nursing is a very physical occupation and that’s where I was, I am a nurse. For people to continue taking care of others, say in a hospital situation, when they’re 70 years old, is pretty devastating.” 

On Medicaid

Marlene: “I’m a parish nurse and I do visits in nursing homes, and many of the people that I visit are on Medicaid and it is not because they want that help, but it’s because they have reached that point in their life where they no longer can afford to do it themselves.”

LISTEN to her interview here.

Background:

1. In an interview with the Jamestown Sun, Cramer advocated for raising the retirement age and making cuts to programs like Medicare.
2. In a town hall sponsored by AARP, Cramer made clear his plans to make cuts to North Dakotans’ hard-earned retirement funds, saying, “President Trump – ironically, here’s one of the areas that he and I don’t agree on. He will not touch – he promised not to touch Social Security.”
3. Later that same week, Cramer doubled down, saying, “he [President Trump] has pledged not to deal with Social Security and Medicare. I think that’s a mistake.”
4. Cramer also said it was “encouraging” to hear Mitch McConnell’s intention to cut Social Security and Medicare.
5. In an op-ed yesterday, Cramer said he doesn’t want to “cut benefits for people currently receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits or for anyone over the age of 55” – but he makes no mention of those North Dakotans who have paid into the program for decades but are 54 years old or younger.
6. In last week’s debate, Cramer unequivocally stated that “everything [is] on the table” when it comes to making changes to Social Security.

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(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer can spout election-year spin all he wants, but the fact is that his votes to repeal the current health care law without a replacement and his support of the ill-advised lawsuit that would eliminate the current law would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions. It’s that simple.

NDxPlains: They Cannot Run From Their Past Actions Against Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions
By Tyler Axness
October 26, 2018

Key Points:

• Yes, North Dakota politicians are threatening insurance protections for pre-existing condition. Some have made repeated attempts to accomplish this but have failed due to public outrage. Now facing that outrage again during an election and as a Republican lawsuit threatens to strip away protections, they’re trying to convince voters otherwise. Don’t buy it. Six years of action speaks louder than eight months of political speak.
• The attempts to remove and diminish protections for pre-existing conditions, reverse Medicaid expansion, and whittle away at essential health benefits has been a consistent part of Kevin Cramer’s congressional record. Though he claims the sixty plus times he voted to accomplish that was merely “symbolic” he has made it abundantly clear it is what he believes. Accusing patients with pre-existing conditions of trying to “game” the system coupled with his votes is a clear indicator. No amount of paid political advertisements can change those facts.
• After failing to successfully throw out those federal protections and change Medicaid into a less effective block-grant program through legislation, Cramer has now fully supported a lawsuit to do just that through the courts. […] If successful, those protections are gone. The lawsuit explicitly says they will be gone just like the repeal bills Cramer supported in Congress. Period.
• These same politicians can hold rushed press conferences orchestrated by paid political consultants to “set the record straight”all they want. It is not what they say, it is what they have done. The desperate spin in an election year shows they’ll literally say anything. They cannot run from what they’ve done, nor the facts.

Read the full article here.

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(BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer’s health care hypocrisy was in the spotlight this weekend following the final U.S. Senate debate, with conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin pointing out that Cramer’s sudden about-face with regard to preserving these protections is “preposterous.”

WATCH:

Key Quotes:

Joy-Ann Reid: “They voted like 70 times to repeal Obamacare root and branch and now they’re like, ‘oh no we love Obamacare.’”
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Jennifer Rubin: “The lawsuit does not offer pre-existing conditions support.”
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This is preposterous.
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If you want to be extremely charitable, their lie is hanging on [state reinsurance plans], but that is not a replacement for pre-existing protections, as just about everybody has said.”

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(BISMARCK, ND) – There was one clear winner in tonight’s debate: Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Heidi demonstrated that she’ll always stand up for North Dakota’s interests – but Kevin Cramer? He’s looking out for himself and his Washington, D.C. bosses.

There’s no greater evidence of this than health care:

HEITKAMP: “Let’s not fool ourselves, let’s just not fool ourselves. When you vote five times to repeal the Affordable Care Act where that patient protection exists, you have voted to eliminate that patient protection. When you support a lawsuit where that sole purpose is to eliminate the protection for pre-existing conditions, you don’t support protections for pre-existing conditions.”

On every issue, Heidi will stand up for North Dakota’s interests while Cramer will continue to lie to North Dakotans. Unfortunately for him, we’re here to hold him accountable for his lies:

Cramer diminished North Dakotans’ concerns over trade war, but the reality is that North Dakota farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers are hurting from these reckless policies.

Cramer continued his political double talk on cutting Social Security & Medicare. But the truth is he’s advocated for changes such as means testing and raising the retirement age are no different than cuts.

Cramer repeatedly misled North Dakota about his dangerous health care agenda. But the truth is Cramer voted 65 times to repeal or undermine the current health care law, including five times to repeal the law without a replacement plan, which would have completely wiped out patient protections for pre-existing conditions.

Cramer continued to “distort” Heidi’s record on immigration and border security. But the truth is Heidi has always had a law-and-order approach to immigration and border security. She’s worked to strengthen our borders in a practical, fiscally responsible way.

BOTTOM LINE: While Heitkamp has a proven bipartisan record of results for North Dakotans, Kevin Cramer’s record is anti-North Dakota – and no amount of election year spin can change that.

Read more here.

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