The grotesque idea health care starts with our ability to pay, so insurers can maintain their healthy profit margins, is still not getting the public attention it should.
So everything pouring out of the Freedom Caucus and Paul Ryan's continuing secret negotiations is going to land on the vulnerable sick. And because Ryan's plan is so complex, no one is going to fully understand the following brutal attack on sick people. Let me try...:
The White House is laying the groundwork for negotiations to move quickly, hinge on Republicans accepting changes to their health care bill that would violate a key promise from President Donald Trump, namely that insurers would have to offer plans to people with pre-existing conditions.Just short of taking out a gun and shooting sick people, Rep. Meadows made this jaw dropping concession:
While those regulations would still technically exist, the idea is that the House bill would now allow states to opt out of “community rating” regulations, which compel insurers to offer plans at the same rate for sick people. Conservatives believe those people would then go into so-called high-risk pools for coverage, but the effect would still likely lead to people who need health care the most paying the most ― or not being able to afford coverage at all. NOTE:
(a majority of states ran high-risk pools before the Affordable Care Act, and the pools were notorious for high premiums and deductibles, along with annual or lifetime limits on coverage. In other words, the pools lacked the kind of coverage and protections that people with medical problems need ― and they frequently wouldn’t cover pre-existing conditions for six to 12 months.)Ditching those protections would let insurers charge exorbitant rates for people with pre-existing conditions while also offering plans that don’t offer key services, like ... hospitalization or lab services.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said when pressed on whether gutting the community rating provisions would allow insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions more, he acknowledged that some sick people may be picking up the slack so that premiums of the healthy would go down.
“The fundamental idea is that marginally sick people would pay the risk associated with their coverage.”
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