New Republican Plan Would Take Away Protections For People With Pre-Existing Conditions
Sick People Would Pay More In Republicans’ New Obamacare Repeal Plan
Republicans are working on a new Obamacare plan that would leave sick people paying much more for health insurance. The deal currently being considered by Republicans would essentially do away with the pre-existing conditions protections under Obamacare.
After the massive failure of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare in March, the Trump administration and House Republicans are hoping for a redo.
The problem with the original plan was that Democrats and moderate Republicans refused to support a plan that would take health insurance away from 24 million people. And conservative Republicans didn’t want to support the plan because, despite taking health insurance away from 24 million people, it didn’t take enough Obamacare protections away from people. So Trumpcare 1.0 failed.
Well, it seems the lesson that Republicans have learned from the failure of Trumpcare is that it didn’t go far enough. And the emerging plan from House Republicans would force people with medical problems to pay much more for their health insurance and possibly not be able to afford insurance at all.
The New York Times reports that Republicans are considering a plan to “do away with a rule that requires insurance companies to charge the same price to everyone who is the same age, a provision called community rating.”
If Republicans succeed at removing that key protection for people with pre-existing conditions, sick people will pay much, much more for insurance. As the New York Times notes, “Without community rating, health plans would be free to charge those patients as much as they wanted.”
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Republicans are also considering a deal that would allow states to opt-out of a requirement that “insurers to cover a standard, minimum package of benefits, known as the essential health benefits.”
If that becomes law, cancer patients could find themselves with health insurance plans that don’t provide treatments like chemotherapy.
And the New York Times also notes that “if both of the Obamacare provisions went away, the hypothetical cancer patient might be able to buy only a plan, without chemotherapy coverage, that costs many times more than a similar plan costs a healthy customer.”
