Renée Martin was thrown into an unaffordable high-risk pool because of an abnormal Pap smear.
Lisa Solod got turned away by four insurers because she was on thyroid replacement, an asthma inhaler and hormones — a not uncommon trifecta for women in their 50s.
Wanda Wickizer was priced out of having insurance because she had taken Lexapro for depression.
Jesse Albert found that he and his family were uninsurable because he had once had a benign skin cancer and a bout of hepatitis C, even though his immune system had cleared the virus.
.. “We didn’t even know where that line was because it was considered proprietary information.”
.. “each company had business plans that relied on using pre-existing conditions to limit the amount of money paid for medical claims.”
In documents reviewed by the committee, one company listed “improved pre-existing exclusion processes” as an opportunity to increase growth.
.. a rational person might avoid a colonoscopy. A polyp removal might prevent cancer but could mean paying higher insurance rates, because patients who get polyps are at risk for developing more polyps, which can be precursors to cancer.
Health-Care Groups Weigh Involvement in GOP Overhaul Push
Lobbies are split on whether to shape a new measure or try to kill it
Largely shut out of the talks, they actively opposed the bill, firing off angry letters and in some cases airing ads aimed at vulnerable House Republicans.
.. in the Senate, which hopes to complete its own version of a health overhaul by August
.. “We are not philosophically opposed to ‘repeal and replace,’ but Americans need to have a conversation about whether replacement is better than what we’ve got,” said Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association. The House health measure “was in our estimation a potentially very bad bill.”
.. Some groups, believing it is inevitable that legislation passes the Senate in some form, plan to offer proposals they believe would improve it. Others, in contrast, hope they can convince at least three GOP Senators to oppose any effort, stripping Republican leaders of the majority they need.
.. Hospitals are concerned about the impact of potential cuts to Medicaid, and their proposals include using state waivers to introduce structural changes to the program that could bring down costs to the federal government.
The CBO, Always the Skunk at the Garden Party
Why is the Republican Party in its current predicament in health-care policy? A lot of reasons, but a big one is that they now have to explain the tradeoffs of a specific plan when their standard-bearer refused to do so in 2016. On the trail, Donald Trump made sweeping promises about how much better health care would be, with no specifics or ideas about how he was going to get there:
“I am going to take care of everybody,” he told 60 Minutes. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now…The government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.”
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”
“Obamacare is going to be repealed and replaced. … You’re going to end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that’s gonna take place immediately after we go in. Okay? Immediately. Fast. Quick.”
“I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”
You can’t keep all of those promises. Some of them are more or less contradictory. You can’t keep Medicaid intact AND repeal Obamacare, because Obamacare expanded Medicaid. If insurance companies cannot charge more for those who have preexisting conditions, it is very difficult to reduce premiums.
Don’t Bet against Tax and Health-Care Reform in 2017
Amid all the Russia controversy, Trump and the GOP Congress can get it done.
.. Look, the House has already passed a repeal and replace of Obamacare. And a Senate health-care working group led by Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz is making progress resolving key issues between moderates and conservatives. There’s no reason why the AHCA can’t become law by the August recess.
And that opens the door for taxes.
.. Representative Peter Roskam, who chairs the tax-policy subcommittee, said this last week: “I’m of the view that 2017 is the year.” He thinks tax reform is easier than replacing Obamacare.
.. So following a markup, Ways and Means can report out a bill. And because prosperity is America’s Number One issue, it will pass the floor relatively easily. And that will put pressure on the Senate to get moving.
.. the very core of the tax bill is a simple three steps:
- a deep corporate-tax-rate cut,
- immediate expensing for new equipment of all kinds, and
- the repatriation of offshore cash.
This is the tonic that will restore capital formation, productivity, real wages, and growth.
Both Senate and House leaders have got to understand how flexible reconciliation is. It can be nearly anything you want it to be. The key player is Senate president Mike Pence, who can overrule the parliamentarian.
.. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
.. “What I have said repeatedly is that any plan we put forward we believe to be paid for with economic growth.”
.. And lowering marginal tax rates across-the-board, especially on large and small businesses, will foster the mother of all prosperities — the one middle-class Americans in all those red counties that voted for Trump have been yearning for.