Broken health care promises: The new Republican plan to gore pre-existing conditions protections

[spanone]

Ever since the American Health Care Act slipped painfully and unmourned into the hereafter in late March, its corpse has been lying on a gurney in cold storage waiting for its executors to figure out what to do with it. Not content to simply dispose of the remains, Republicans in Congress and the White House have been periodically zapping the body with jolts of electricity and informing reporters that the American Health Care Act is still twitching with life and might actually get up and start tap dancing at any moment.

The latest development in this tortured effort to revive the Republican health care bill is a reported compromise amendment between warring factions of the House GOP. The AHCA failed the first time around because it could not muster enough support from hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and more moderate Republicans: Each side had differing legislative priorities, and appeasing one faction meant alienating the other.

As The Huffington Post’s Matt Fuller and Jonathan Cohn wrote, there could be a deal between the two sides in the works. The proposal would allow states to opt out of existing rules prohibiting insurers from charging sick people more for coverage, thus making hard-line conservatives happy. It would also reinstate rules requiring insurers to cover “essential health benefits” (though those could also be waived at the state level), which would make moderates happy. There’s no firm agreement in place, as The Huffington Post noted.

Republicans have been flirting with changes like these for a while, and if they’re serious about moving forward with this “compromise,” then they’re making a huge mistake. Hollowing out pre-existing conditions protections (as this compromise would) might squeeze some votes out of the hard-right flank of the House GOP caucus, but it will also make the already unpopular AHCA even less palatable for the voting public. As I wrote earlier in April, Obamacare’s pre-existing coverage protections are extremely popular — so popular that a good chunk of people who back repealing the Affordable Care Act change their minds when they’re told the pre-existing conditions provisions would be scrapped.

http://www.salon.com/2017/04/20/broken-health-care-promises-the-new-republican-plan-to-gore-preexisting-conditions-protections/

[Wounded Bear]

1. Deals between the Right and the Far Right are hardly "compromise"...

Essentially, Repubs are deciding for us whether we want our throats cut or our heads chopped off.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. Paul Ryan desperately wants to kill poor people.

So I hope the people he is aggressively trying to kill and the many millions more he is trying to financially devastate, will view his accordingly.

[underpants]

3. Surcharges table. $17,360 for childbirth etc.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/04/20/430858/latest-aca-repeal-plan-explode-premiums-people-pre-existing-conditions/

[beachbum bob]

4. conservatives need to be called out and put on the record

I sure hope we see a vote in the house on this garbage, we need them to be on the record for 2018

[SticksnStones]

5. It's their survival of the fittest doctrine

Why spend money on Americans who are genetically predisposed for illness and weakness...right?

It's the long term culling of the herd.

Just let the bloodlines of the unhealthy wither and die off.

That's how to Make America Great, Amirite?