Senate GOP Bill a “False Promise” on Pre-Existing Conditions

Vulnerable Senate Republicans, led by North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, are trying – again – to cover-up their damaging health care records… and their latest legislative stunt is – again – being called out as a fraud.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board weighed in today with a scathing review:

• The bill pretends to be about safeguarding Americans with preexisting health conditions. But it’s really about protecting Senate Republicans from the stink caused by the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

• All the PROTECT Act would do is encourage insurers to do something they did before the ACA: offer cheaper policies with thin coverage aimed at healthy customers, and considerably more expensive policies with comprehensive coverage for people who might actually need costly care.

• In other words, it would allow insurers to go back to the bad old days of segmenting low-risk and high-risk customers, then designing their policies to attract the youngest, healthiest consumers.

And the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt summed up the serious problems with the Senate GOP’s latest stunt on pre-existing conditions:

Unlike the ACA, the new Republican pre-existing condition bill would not disallow lifetime or annual limits, cap patient out-of-pocket costs, require coverage of essential benefits, prohibit gender rating, or provide subsidies to make premiums more affordable.

— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) April 11, 2019

This is yet another sham GOP bill claiming to protect people with pre-existing conditions that fails to address the Trump administration’s dangerous lawsuit and doesn’t maintain the health care protections that exist under current federal law.

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