Truth Alert: Josh Hawley’s stance on pre-existing conditions

In an ABC 17 News Truth Alert, we are examining a commercial paid for by the Senate Majority PAC, a group with a mission to swing control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.

The ad starts off with Josh Hawley saying, “I support forcing insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions.”

The announcer continues, “The golden boy, Josh Hawley, is lying to us again. Hawley’s ad has been called “ridiculously dishonest,” claiming to support pre-existing conditions while backing a lawsuit to end them. It’s Hawley who filed a lawsuit to overturn protections for people with pre-existing condition, like cancer and diabetes. Josh Hawley, he’s lying right to our faces.”

Hawley said he supports forcing insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions.

As reported in previous Truth Alerts, the attorney general is part of a lawsuit that would end the Affordable Care Act along with the protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

His campaign said the lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, is to stop the government from forcing citizens to buy something they may not want. Hawley argues Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill would have you believe the only way to protect pre-existing condition patients is through Obamacare.

The Hawley campaign said, “Josh is committed to covering those with preexisting conditions, and we don’t have to break the Constitution to do it.”

Hawley apparently is optimistic that Congress can pass a GOP measure to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but without one in place his political ads saying he supports pre-existing protections, while suing to stop the only law the U.S. has to do that, is being mocked and ridiculed by many critics.

On Wednesday, Hawley published an op-ed in the Springfield News Leader . He wrote of a Federal Insurance Guarantee, where he said insurers on the individual market would be required to offer plans to people with preexisting conditions at the same price they do to other people.