ICYMI: Mike Rogers Wants Michiganders To Pay More For Cancer Screenings

MICHIGAN – A new report from The Bulwark exposes Mike Rogers’ long record of siding with private insurance companies and backing Trump’s efforts to jack up healthcare costs and rip coverage away from Michigan families — including his support for letting insurers slap patients with hefty copays for routine cancer screenings.

The Bulwark reports that Rogers wants to give private insurance companies the green light to charge patients for routine care the Affordable Care Act currently requires them to cover at no cost:

  • “But Rogers also has some big, potentially controversial notions about how to change healthcare. Just for starters, he likes the idea of letting insurers charge copays for routine cancer screenings and some other forms of preventive care—which, under current law, the insurers cannot do.”
  • Asked about lowering healthcare costs earlier this year, Rogers suggested making patients pay more out of pocket: “If you go up and have to pay the doctor $50 for your annual physical, that’s probably okay, right?”

Rogers has spent years trying to gut the Affordable Care Act and rip health coverage away from Michiganders:

  • Rogers supported letting ACA tax credits expire, spiking health insurance premiums for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders and driving 130,000 — nearly 1 in 4 — to lose or drop their coverage.
  • Rogers backed Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ devastating Medicaid cuts that health experts warn could rip coverage away from hundreds of thousands of Michiganders starting next year.
  • In Congress, Rogers repeatedly voted to gut the Affordable Care Act and strip Michiganders of their health coverage.

After years of trying to make healthcare more expensive and harder to access, Rogers is now dodging questions about what he would do in the Senate:

  • When The Bulwark pressed Rogers’ campaign on his healthcare agenda, it got no answers: “The Rogers campaign declined to respond to a series of policy questions I submitted last week…”
  • And Rogers has offered Michigan voters few details about what he would actually do on healthcare: “At the moment, the only public guide to his health care agenda is a threadbare page on his campaign website that has a few perfunctory promises about seeking greater transparency in health prices […] None would meaningfully alter health care costs or access.”

“Mike Dodgers is running away from his own record again — this time, his decade-long crusade to make Michiganders pay more for healthcare,” said campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak. “Families are already struggling from Donald Trump’s healthcare cuts and price hikes, and Mike Rogers wants to help insurance companies squeeze even more money out of them. Rogers can keep dodging his record. Abdul will keep showing up and fighting to guarantee health care for every American.”

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