PKU can cause profound, irreversible mental retardation. BD can cause permanent hearing loss, among other symptoms. Both are completely treatable, by diet for PKU and by vitamin supplementation for BD. Newborn screening for PKU is required in all 50 states not all states require screening for BD.
The government’s own experts, the Discretionary Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children in the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends screening all newborns for both conditions as a part of the core panel of newborn screenings.
The decision to cover one and not the other as a minimum essential benefit is arbitrary. The PPACA would have you believe that a plan that has PKU screening but not BD screening is good but a plan that covers BD screening but not PKU is shabby. Right. :rolleyes:
Screen high risk population for diabetes - required coverage. Screen high risk population for glaucoma - not required.
Plans are either compliant or non-compliant with the requirements of the PPACA. The requirements for a plan to be compliant are not the very definition of a good plan.
What I mean is that pre-Obamacare, we were subsidizing health care in the most expensive way possible. Obamacare is designed to bend the cost curve, and make the subsidies less expensive. People are going to shift costs to the rest of us. Obamacare is designed to make that cost shift less expensive on all of us.
Now, I have my own doubts about whether or not it will work that way in the long run, but the underlying theory works decently at controlling costs in Switzerland, so I’m okay with letting Obamacare play out.
But when I am paying for people’s health care, I have little patience for people who demand that I pay for their health care in the most expensive way possible.
I’m probably bringing a bit too much of my personal experience into this thread. It’s just the 3 friends I mentioned earlier (2 of whom are no longer friends) all thought that they were actually paying for their own health care, when in reality, their health care plan was really private insurance until the caps were reached, then Medicaid and bankruptcy (after their money runs out). They had cost-shifting to the rest of us baked into their plans, and then had the nerve to demand that we do nothing to control those costs. It’s infuriating.
The obvious reason to disallow insurance plans with no employee co-pay or deductible is to contain costs - making consumers pay for part of their health care bill acts as way to keep some form of cost containment incentives in place. It doesn’t surprise me at all if Obamacare disallowed such policies.
I just wanted to respond to this bit too. Unless a guy is a virgin and will be a virgin for the rest of his life, I could give a rats’ ass that he has to buy a policy which covers pap smears or maternity leave. If someone is a lifelong virgin, they have my sympathies, but it would probably cost more than it’s worth to figure out everyone’s virgin status.