Larry Levitt, Senior VP of the Kaiser Family Foundation, has said that “27% of adults have pre-existing conditions that insurers wouldn’t cover pre-[Obamacare] at all. The premiums for these people [under Trumpcare] will be astronomical.” Other estimates of the proportion of adults that will NOT be covered by the AHCA (Trumpcare 2.0) range up to 50%. The AHCA partly copes with this problem by establishing a “risk pool” of uncertain amount – some sources say $8 billion, some say $15 billion – but many pre-existing conditions are not eligible for it, and insurers would have to certify individual eligibility for the risk pool, creating a massive burden of administrative overhead whose cost would of course be passed on to consumers. Trumpcare official propaganda states that the AHCA does cover pre-existing conditions. “Yes, it does,” for some people, under restricted circumstances, and until it runs out of money. For people with pre-existing conditions, the situation will be what it was before the establishment of Obamacare, at best. The Center for American Progress estimates that, for some cancer patients who are eligible for Trumpcare, premiums will be over $140,000 per year.
Meanwhile, my own research displays the worst disadvantages of social media. The young woman who posted the “List of Deniable Conditions” on Facebook informs me that she originally got that list from a tweet, but the tweet has now been taken down, and neither she nor I can find that list anywhere else…so far. Most of what I have found suggests that the official propaganda for Trumpcare is grossly misleading. Our only hope at the moment is that a bill banning coverage for pregnancy, cancer therapy, hemophilia, and heart disease – to pick just four examples out of dozens – will never make it past the Senate. If the AHCA becomes law, the wallets of the wealthy will become dramatically healthier as they fatten off its carefully obscured tax breaks. For most of the rest of us, the American “Health” “Care” act is a Federally guaranteed lose-lose proposition.
eta, I can’t let this go by:
A divided Republican Party now faces the possibility of healthcare reform grinding to a halt in light of the issue over pre-existing conditions. President Trump, for his part, seems unsure about what’s in his own bill, which only adds to the confusion. Optimistic members of Congress have suggested that they could push the AHCA to a House vote by next week, but there doesn’t appear to be widespread support even for the revised version. For people with medical problems, the debate over healthcare reform continues to play fast and loose with their care.
Now, is this from HuffPo? Think Progress? TPM? No, this is from the official Trumpcare site itself. Tell me that anybody knows what’s going to happen next.