President Barack Obama’s new health care proposal leaves the U.S. Virgin Islands and other territories out in the cold, Delegate Donna Christensen and her territorial colleagues are saying in a letter to the president.
Obama’s proposal is not a bill as such, but a suggested approach for reconciling the relatively progressive U.S. House bill with the rather more limited Senate bill.
But coming from Obama’s "bully" presidential pulpit, the letter says, it carries great weight in the discussion right now, however, and is the presumptive starting point for the process. While it cuts a middle path between the two bills in many respects, when it comes to the 4.4 million residents of the territories, Obama’s proposal would "adopt the Senate language almost in its entirety," excluding the territories from many of the important benefits granted to states, the delegates wrote to Obama and the congressional leadership.
Most egregiously, they said, it excludes the territories from what they call the centerpiece of the bill: a health care exchange to provide for guaranteed coverage and competition among insurers. It also excludes the territories from a ban on being denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions and exacerbates the disparity between federal Medicaid funding between the territories and the states, they said.
“This new proposal is only worth $15 million a year or $135 million over the life of the bill,” wrote the delegates. “This amounts to only 0.17 percent of the $79 billion in new spending that the proposal would add to the Senate bill.”
In a statement, Christensen said she was "extremely disappointed that after a year of meetings and negotiations, and after numerous promises by the president and administration officials, the territories are back to square one as far as health care coverage is concerned.”
Christensen brought her objections about the way the U.S. Virgin Islands and the other territories are being treated to the floor of the House Monday night, she said.
“I have also told our leadership that the funding being denied the territories is significant to us, but hardly noticeable if taken from the big ticket items in the president’s proposal,” she said.
“The president’s proposal leaves roughly 4.5 million Americans, a disproportionate number of who desperately want and need health care coverage out in the cold.… Residents of the territories are Americans who love this nation, who bravely serve in war to defend this nation and who deserve to be treated as first-class citizens in all aspects of our democracy, including access to affordable health care.”
At the conclusion of their joint letter, the four territorial delegates urged Congress to make sure any final bill includes the territories in all of its provisions.
