WASHINGTON -- The former acting director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a Kaiser Family Foundation senior vice president rallied consumer healthcare advocates Thursday afternoon to support the Affordable Care Act, closing the first day of the .
Andy Slavitt and Larry Levitt, respectively, criticized opponents of the ACA, extolled its successes and encouraged the dozens gathered inside a basement-floor hotel ballroom to prepare for a long fight to sustain progressive healthcare gains.
"We are just at the beginning of this debate," said Levitt, Kaiser's Program for the Study of Health Reform and Private Insurance.
Both spoke for about 15 minutes, but did not take questions from the audience. Slavitt, the acting CMS director under President Barack Obama, recounted colleagues' hard work immediately after November's election, noting that has inspired him to push on.
"It ain't over. All is not lost," he said. After numerous hearings, conjecture and Supreme Court cases, he added, "we are still standing ... We'll do our best to keep making progress."
The debate over the ACA is "not a battle of ideas at all," Slavitt said, saying Republican leaders simply want to strip benefits from millions of Americans.
He said the country has three options concerning healthcare: Move forward, go back to the pre-ACA days of 2009, or go back to 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were significantly hamstrung, among other problems. "There is no plan to replace the ACA," Slavitt said, calling the Republican Party's ideas "a return to insecurity."
"If we see a plan that looks like 2009, it's not a plan we can accept," he said. "We can't go back [eight] years. We can't go back 52 years."
Slavitt encouraged the crowd to "tell the truth to the American public" about the ACA's benefits and successes to counter the rhetoric and "alternative facts" often espoused in the media.
Regarding facts, Levitt greeted the crowd: "I'm with Kaiser so I come with facts." He emphasized one in particular, that the national uninsured rate is its lowest in history.
The ACA has "clearly been a success," he said, noting that "my head has been spinning a lot lately" in part because of the rhetoric criticizing it.
Families USA released acriticizing Republican proposals to replace the ACA. "Despite public disapproval, congressional Republicans are rushing down a dangerous path that could take health coverage away from 30 million people and raise premiums for millions more," according to the fact sheet.
"To date, they have failed to offer a credible replacement plan that provides the same level of care, coverage, and consumer protections as the ACA. In the coming weeks, numerous proposals are likely to be touted as parts of a so-called 'replacement' plan. But these proposals either have significant faults or have proven unworkable when implemented in the past."
Later Thursday, Families USA released a from executive director Ron Pollack about the healthcare proposal released during the day by Republicans:
"Once again Republican are repackaging old ideas that have never worked, and passing them off as something new. Their proposal effectively ends the Medicaid expansion. It also ends the traditional Medicaid program by installing federal financial caps or block grants that would decimate funding, meaning states would either have to pay more or cover less.
"They also repeal the ACA, and, in its place, force consumers to pay more for their health care with pocketbook-harmful measures like health saving accounts and drastically scaling back tax credits that would make coverage unaffordable for millions.
"And people with pre-existing conditions would be in danger of becoming uninsurable or be forced into expensive high-risk pools that have not worked in the past."
Physician Among 18 Seeking Price's House Seat
Also at the Health Action meeting, a former cardiologist pitched her candidacy to fill Tom Price's vacant Congressional seat in Georgia's 6th District of Georgia.
, of Marietta, had declared officially in Georgia Tuesday, making healthcare her core issue.
"I believe that we need a 'Doctor in the House' who will stand up for working families," Quigg, a Democrat, wrote in a statement addressed "to all Georgians and ACA supporters."
Quigg also promised to "fight to expand access to affordable healthcare and preserve and improve Medicare and Social Security ... Because of partisan politics in Washington millions of Americans are at risk of losing their healthcare."
Public education, higher education debt, strengthening the EPA, and women's right are other issues Quigg plans to focus on.
Quigg practiced medicine for 25 years, she said, including time as a department director in Chicago. She stopped practicing to take closer care of her son, which exposed her to problems within healthcare that afflict thousands. (She had to sacrifice her house to pay medical bills, she said.) Quigg had also organized a protest of ACA repeal in Atlanta in January.
A special election is scheduled for April 18 to replace Price -- himself a physician -- who recently was confirmed as HHS Secretary. Quigg was one of 18 candidates running for his seat as of Wednesday, according to the , including Democrats, Republicans, and independents. "It's kind of a free-for-all," she told 乌鸦传媒.
Quigg has secured thousands of signatures, she said, but added: "I need physician support." She won't take corporate donations, she said.