I’ll note that I don’t see any other way to interpret the new language, either.
As a teenager, I suffered from heart disease that I thankfully survived but now, as I’m nearing my graduation in a few months, have to worry about what health insurance I can possibly get. So healthcare reform, and even this bill that wasn’t all I wanted it to be, was a very good thing for me. It would have more than validated my vote for Obama and gone a long way to making me proud of the party to which I’ve belonged since I turned voting age, and unofficially long before that.
So, fucking thanks, Democrats. Thanks for chickening out and dropping the one part of this bill I really, truly needed. Thanks for refusing to stand up for your constituents and supporters when we needed your help.
They still have time, I’ll admit that. Maybe they’ll realize that this is a bad idea and fight for pre-existing conditions language to be firm in the bill. But at this point, I’m not really holding my breath.
And besides, I probably can’t afford brain damage now, too.
You were thrown under the bus while covered by your prior insurance company, so we need to assess the extent to which your injuries were a pre-existing condition. Please provide the names, billing and physical addresses and contact information for every physician or specialist you’ve seen in the past five years. Then, provide us with proof of prior coverage consisting of a letter from your prior insurance company listing the policy number, your employer at the time, your employer’s Human Resources coordinator and full contact information. We will then be able to process this claim within 60-90 days. Have a nice day!
I hear that they’re going to allow each uninsurable person to murder one insured person each year, with no legal penalties, as a way to make up for being such assholes.*
Within a decade there should be no insured left, and hence no insurance industry. Then we can start over and design a rational health care system.
*Of course this is untrue. If you are uninsurable, it is your own fault, and God hates you, and you deserve to suffer, to be pointed at and snickered at by your betters.
No Free ‘murder benefits’ for you!
Were the Republicans really against the idea of eliminating the pre-existing conditions altogether? I have waffled on UHC quite a bit (currently in favor of), but I have long thought that a few “simple” reforms would go a long way to easing the problems, if UHC can’t politically get done. And this was one of the simple ones I thought could get done.
Sorry to hear about your situation VoluntaryPlan - maybe the dems will grow some cojones and the pubs will grow some heart.
I agree the bill isn’t all we hoped (i for one hoped that cost control measures would be included) and i’d love to have the kind of coverage your looking for included. But to blame them for not being able to do everything you wanted them to in the face of something like 75% disapproval by those constituents you say they are letting down is somewhat unfair. We’ve seen in NJ, VA, and now MA that people are ready to vote out the Democrats wholesale, so not developing and passing a bill that would make them even more unpopular is hardly craven. They want to keep their jobs too.
If passing a health care bill is doomed to destroy the Democrats and usher in a new era of GOP dominance, wouldn’t the best Republican strategy be to free one of their Senators (from a liberal state, of course) to vote for it and thus ensure passage?
How can a law be fashioned that a) forces health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions a la the OP, while b) doesn’t provide an incentive for people then to not buy insurance until they discover they have cancer et al (similar to buying home owners insurance during a robbery or after it’s on fire), while c) not forcing people to purchase said insurance, which more than a few people have said would be unconstitutional and the aforementioned 18-35 demo frequently doesn’t want.
Serious question, yes I know it’s the pit, and sry if this has been addressed already in some other thread.
Seriously. This is a huge colossal fuck up. I’m almost certainly sure it was minor spitballing and wouldn’t come to the Floor, but there’s one way to be sure. Call your congressman.
While you’re there, tell him to get on board with passing the Senate bill, which is a good bill, and would save tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives (including quite possibly yours and mine) over the next decade. Then call your senators and tell them to support a fix of the bill through reconciliation – which only requires 51 votes, and leaves the GOP with their dick in their hands. Because even though it should, the House isn’t going to pass the Senate bill unless they’re confident that the Senate will support a reconciliation fix. (And that could, honestly, lead to a legitimately better bill – although the Senate bill is already good enough to support as is.)
Passing a mere pre-existing exclusion ban is futile – it’ll send insurance costs skyrocketing. As to Mr Smashy’s question – no law can be so fashioned that preserves private insurance. I for one think that’s an indictment of private insurance and we should have Medicare for all, but it’s not going to fly. But so what? The bill isn’t unconstitutional – no honest commentator thinks it is. And it’s not wrong either; it’s the price people should have to pay to live in our society, especially since we’ve already promised to subsidize their care once they’re no longer young. Moreover, the young invincibles are not uncommonly devaluing the cost and likelihood of catastrophic injury or illness.
Were you covered under a plan with your parents, and are you still covered? If you’re covered, remain covered as long as you can. You don’t mention if it’s your high school or college graduation. Students can remain covered on a parent’s plan till age 23, I believe that’s been extended but I don’t have the details handy. AFAIK, generally, by maintaining continuous coverage pre-existing conditions remain covered.
As an actual NJ Dem I sincerely hope no one takes that election result very seriously. The NJ Dem’s ran a campaign so bad I – who have NEVER not voted in my life let alone for a Rep – I was undecided whether or not to vote on election day because I was being telemarketed a dozen times a day in the week before the election.
Corzine was a bad governor. That says nothing at all about America’s need for UHC.
This has been covered in other threads, but the short answer is you can’t. Requiring the insurance companies to take everyone without forcing everyone to participate is impossible (either the insurance companies would leave the business or premiums would go up astronomically). But once you have a mandate, you need to have subsidies for those who can’t afford insurance otherwise.
This is why the bill is so complicated. What seems a simple no-brainer reform requires to other reforms which are much more controversial. The only simple solution would be single payer, which is a political non-starter in the U.S.
Sorry dude. I did a thought exercise about the options in a situation like that.
What is scary is that as health care becomes less affordable, fewer jobs offer it. Back in 1993 about 75% of jobs offered health care. Now only about 55% do. By 2020 it’ll probably be closer to 40%. The group market via employers covers pre-existing conditions.
However the individual insurance market doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions.
So what happens when 60% of people aren’t insured via work and pre-existing conditions are still banned?
We are already begging for table scraps, who knows what the future will be like.
Either way, I don’t know 100% if the dems are going to allow insurance companies to ban pre-existing conditions. People might be reading too much into Plouffe’s statements. I would wait and see. I would put very little past the dems with regards to spinelessness, corporate serfdom and battered spouse syndrome under the guise of bipartisanship.
But I’d wait and see if the actual language calls for that in the final bill.
On another note, I’m fairly young too (barely 10 years older than you) but already starting to feel some guilt about the state of things that are being left to the next generation. My brother’s kids are both under 6. But who knows what life will be like in 20 years after another 2 decades of radically spiraling health care and education costs combined with plutocratic rule.
A 12 month waiting period to cover pre-existing conditions.
Mandate high deductible (10k or more per individual) catastrophic care for everyone. A plan like that should only cost $50-100/month or so.
We need mandates though. Every insured person pays about $1100 per family to cover the uninsured.
Personally, I am uninsured. However it is because of pre-existing conditions combined with the fact that they’d just rescind my policy on a technicality if I ever try to use it anyway.
We need rescission protections, pre-existing condition changes, cost controls and universal coverage. Its hard to get all of those.