Why Mitch McConnell’s secrecy gambit on his health-care bill could backfire
the secrecy with which this bill is being crafted is a tacit admission on Republicans’ part that its likely effects on Americans’ health care and financial security are so gruesome that it must be kept hidden until the last possible moment, lest the public have time to understand what’s in it.
.. it will do what the bill the House passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act does:
- take health coverage away from millions of people in order to give a tax break to the wealthy.
.. It will likely undo the ACA’s mandates for essential health benefits, allowing the sale of “insurance” that in practice covers almost none of the needs people actually have. It will probably allow insurers to once again impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage, which can turn a life-threatening illness or accident into a financial catastrophe as well. And it could undermine the protections the tens of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions now enjoy.
.. The Kaiser Family Foundation looked at what non-group plans (analogous to what people now purchase on the ACA exchanges) covered before ACA’s essential benefits mandate was in place. They found that 75 percent of the plans didn’t cover maternity care, 45 percent didn’t include coverage for substance abuse, and 38 percent didn’t cover mental and behavioral health.
.. And as any marketer knows, suspense is a terrific tool to increase public interest in your product.