With the GOP-controlled House of Representatives set to vote to repeal health care reform this week, the Obama administration is intensifying a public campaign to reframe the fight over the law: making it one in which Republicans are villains, trying to rescind benefits the Affordable Care Act provides people. One of those benefits is a ban on discrimination against people with pre-existing health conditions.
A report from the Department of Health and Human Services, published today, concludes that between 50 and 129 million Americans have pre-existing medical conditions, depending on the definition of the term. About 50 million Americans have pre-existing conditions as defined by state-run high-risk pools before the new health care law passed, according to the study. Likewise, a full 129 million have pre-existing conditions as defined by private health insurance companies.
However, under the federal health care reform law, people with pre-existing conditions can enroll in the “Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan.” And by 2014, under the law, even private insurers will not be allowed to deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
Publishing this study now, ahead of the health care repeal vote, highlights the fact that repeal would yank people back into the pre-2010 status quo where nearly half of all consumers could be denied coverage — or be provided with limited coverage — because of a common chronic illness.
Republicans say they support the pre-existing conditions provisions in the law. But they no longer believe that insuring everybody should be a national goal — and insuring everybody, or almost everybody, is key to eliminating discrimination by private insurers.
