Under the House Healthcare Bill do people with pre-existing conditions have coverage
or not? This is what Trump recently said: [Donald Trump] Pre-existing conditions are
in the Bill. [Reporter] So I'm not hearing you, Mr President,
say there's a guarantee of pre-existing conditions. [Trump] We actually have a clause that guarantees.
And then in response to that, CNN host Chris Cuomo said:
[Chris Cuomo] There is a complicated waiver system that gives the some of the states some more flexibility.
They can opt out of pre-existing conditions under certain conditions.
So who's telling the truth? Well CNN's graphics bar sure made up its mind.
But really, it should have said something like
Better! You see, Trump was right. The House Bill does
force health insurance companies to offer health coverage to sick people with
pre-existing conditions. But Trump was also wrong! Under certain circumstances they can
charge you so much you simply can't afford it.
So, what are those circumstances? Well first of all under Obamacare there's something called
community rating, which means health insurance must be sold...
But the House Bill also allows states to get a waiver from community rating if they want
one. Now it's not clear that any states will even ask for a waiver because community rating
is really popular. According to the Cato Institute, it has 63%
approval to 33% against. But let's say you do live in a red state and they do ask for
a waiver. Then you might have a problem. The next question then is do you buy your insurance
yourself on the individual market? Because the community rating waiver does not apply
to people who get their health care from their employers, or from the government. It only
applies to these people on the individual market. So only these people can get screwed.
The next question is do you have continuous coverage? Because the House Bill has kept
Obamacare's "guaranteed renewable" rules, and that means...
So, as long as you keep paying for your plan you're fine, but if you stop payments for
63 days then you drop your continuous coverage and then, in the waiver states, health insurance
companies can charge you whatever they like. And remember, under this bill subsidies for
the poor will be reduced and premiums for the old will be increased.
So your average 64 year old with an income of US $26,000 will see their premiums rise
from $1,700 to about $14,000, and that's on average! So the poor and the old may not be
able to afford continuous coverage, and that is when you might get screwed.
But only if you have a pre-existing condition. Because you see just before Obamacare kicked
in the Federal Government offered heavily subsidised premiums for anyone who was denied
coverage because of a pre-existing condition. So how many people joined the plan? While
Democratic Senator Kamala Harris would have you believe, it was ...
The program actually peaked at... 115,000
Throw in 200,000 or so who were on state-run high risk pools at the time, and you have
about 315,000 people thrown off their health insurance by pre-existing conditions nationally.
But this bill's only going to screw the pre-existing condition people in waiver states of course,
so proportionately we're probably talking more like 150,000 people getting screwed.
But now, a few caveats. We don't know how many people with pre-existing
conditions didn't join those programs. We don't know many waiver states there'll
be; there might be none. In waiver states there'll be high-risk pools
for the screwed, but most experts believe they'll be seriously underfunded so they're
probably of limited value. If the screwed people get really sick they
can still go to an emergency room and risk bankruptcy.
OK, that will do. Nevertheless, if you end up being screwed
by this bill you will REALLY get screwed, and you can put that on a graphic.