On the ACA and Pre-Existing Conditions

Question and Answer:

Question:  

Trump and most of the politicians I’ve heard all said they will protect pre existing so I don’t know why its such an issue?

Answer: 

All Republicans campaigned on a full repeal of the ACA during the ’16 campaign. McConnell himself said they would rip it out root and branch. Once elected, it somehow became “repeal and replace”. 

They didn’t rip it out root and branch. Instead they tried a very complicated two-step boogie to fix the damn thing. It didn’t work.

The pollsters reported that the people liked the pre-existing conditions mandate. The problem with that is that it encourages uninsured people to stay uninsured until they face a critical health issue. This is what Obamacare tried to address with the individual mandate, which is now repealed under the tax reform bill earlier this year. The biggest issue with pre-existing conditions under the ACA is that it spread the costs out only among those in the private health insurance market.

There are lots of other issues with the ACA which are unnecessary, violates the doctor-patient relationship and mandates all sorts of reporting, forbids private doctors from opening or expanding an existing private practice hospital, and mandates so-called minimum coverages which affects group coverage as well.

Most Obamacare enrollees were simply dumped into Medicaid, while stealing 787 billion from Medicare.

Those who were productive, had previous private health insurance coverage and didn’t qualify for a subsidy found that they could not keep their doctor or insurance. Their new Obamacare premiums had doubled and their co-pays and deductibles increased by up to 500%. Even some who were subsidized found that they could not afford to use the insurance.

Obamacare was never meant to fix anything, it was meant to fail, with democrats hoping for an outcry for Medicare for All. AKA, single-payer, with the government making all meaningful health care decisions for all of us. Sound familiar? Medicare for all, really means healthcare for none. All current private, group, and employer plans will vanish overnight, including current Medicare plans.

Obamacare still needs a full repeal. If we want to cover pre-existing conditions we can certainly do that outside of traditional insurance plans by adding some language to current Medicaid law, spreading the base out to everyone, not being restricted to private health insurance as is the case today. You can’t buy home insurance when your home is burning down, so why should anyone expect to move that burden to the private health insurance market?

There are lots of ways that we can drive down health insurance costs, while maintaining or even improving health care. Obamacare rejected all of them.

 

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