Tag Archives: pre-existing conditions

Vote to Repeal Health Care Reform Not Meaningless At All

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by in budget, Congress, Conservatives, health care, Politics, Republicans

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My first inclination is to call the Republican vote to repeal health care reform yesterday meaningless, since it’s unlikely to even come up for a vote in the Senate and faces a certain presidential veto even if it did,  but it actually wasn’t meaningless at all. It told us everything we need to know about today’s Republican party. Since they offered no alternative, only a “no” to the current law, the message was loud and clear.

Republicans are in favor of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans are in favor of Americans going bankrupt because of medical expenses. Republicans are in favor of insurance companies cancelling your policy for any reason, real or imagined, as soon as you get sick. Republicans don’t give a damn about the deficit. Republicans will lie about, distort, and ignore facts and figures that don’t support their positions.

Here it is straight from the horses mouths. Steve King sees the pre-existing conditions provision as a “minor thing”:

“Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) claimed Wednesday that he wasn’t worried about eliminating the popular preexisting conditions provision of the health care bill through the current GOP effort to repeal the law…This is too many pages, it’s too cluttered, it’s too big an argument to allow it to turn on one or two minor things.”

Phil Gingrey brushes aside the HHS report which says that up to 129 million Americans have a pre-existing condition that would deny them coverage, saying that number must include people with “hangnails and fever blisters” and that “if you believe those statistics, I’ve got a beach I can sell you in Pennsylvania.”

Gingrey is only following his leader. Speaker Boehner on the CBO report which says repealing health care will increase the deficit by $230 billion:

“…Boehner told reporters: “I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit.” The budget experts are “entitled to their opinion,” added Boehner.”

The “job-killing” part of the statement is a distortion of another CBO report on whether or not health care reform would lead to job losses. But Republicans have never been ones to let facts get in the way of a good lie, See “death panels” and “pull the plug on Grandma.”

Paul Krugman gets down to the nitty-gritty:

“The key to understanding the GOP analysis of health reform is that the party’s leaders are not, in fact, opposed to reform because they believe it will increase the deficit. Nor are they opposed because they seriously believe that it will be “job-killing” (which it won’t be). They’re against reform because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do. And it’s not about the money…the modern GOP has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs.”

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Pre-Existing Condition Loophole?

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by in Congress, health care, lobbyists, Politics

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When Speaker Pelosi said of health care reform legislation on March 9 that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy,” I would guess she was referring to all the positive elements of the bill which would come to light after all the sturm und drang of the debate had passed. However, there appears to be some controversy only 2 days after the bill’s passage over the ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. From AP via Firedoglake:

“President Barack Obama’s new health care law has a gap when it comes to one of its much-touted immediate benefits, improved coverage for children in poor health, congressional officials confirmed Tuesday.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill that Obama signed into law Tuesday.”

According to Kaiser, the language in the legislation is a bit murky (intentionally perhaps?) :

“…health advocates and some insurers say the law does not clearly state that such protection starts this year. If it doesn’t, uninsured children with pre-existing conditions might not get help until 2014, when the law requires  insurers to issue policies for all applicants regardless of health condition.

…One thing is clear: The law does nothing to stop insurers from charging higher rates for children with pre-existing illnesses until 2014 when insurers can no longer use health status in setting premiums.”

Of course the insurance companies and their lobbyists jumped all over this possible loophole:

“Randy Kammer, a vice president for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, the largest health insurer in that state, said she interprets the law as allowing insurers to reject coverage for children in some cases until 2014.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main insurance lobbying group, says through a spokesman that it interprets the new law as not requiring insurers to cover all child applicants this year.”

It’s almost as if the insurance companies knew the loophole was there. Couldn’t have anything to do with Liz Fowler, a former VP of WellPoint, being a senior aide to Sen. Baucus and director of the Senate Finance Committee health care staff, could it?

The response from the administration is that “clarifying regulations” will be forthcoming from the Department of Health and Human Services. “Clarifying regulations” for 2-day old legislation? The old carpenter’s adage about ‘measure twice, cut once’ comes to mind.