President Tump discovered not too long ago that Health Care is hard. So it’s no wonder he doesn’t always get things right. He said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, “Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it. I said, ‘Has to be.'”
Wrong.
In the last day, two respected organizations, Consumers Union and AARP, confirmed what we said two weeks ago: the AHCA will make it impossible for many people — if not most people — with pre-existing conditions to afford health insurance if their state opts out of the ACA rules that guarantee people with pre-existing are offered insurance at the same rates as those without them. A million people in Pennsylvania are threatened if, as seems likely, the Republican-dominated General Assembly were to vote to make Pennsylvania one of those states.
The Republican plan calls for high risk pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions. But as Consumers Union says, their “long track-record of failure have historically resulted in very high premiums and onerous terms for coverage that doesn’t provide the care consumers need.” Consumers Union points out, as we did, that we can’t make high risk pools effective in protecting people with pre-existing conditions at a lower cost than the cost of the ACA. The nation would have to spend more than $1 trillion over ten years, that is 300% more than is included in the most generous version of the AHCA, to guarantee affordable, high-quality care for everyone with pre-existing conditions.
Members of Congress have to decide whether or not they are going to support a plan on the basis of Donald Trump’s fake guarantiees and risk the health insurance of milions of people.