Dan Calabrese: The Truth About Obamacare & Pre-Existing Conditions That Democrats Don't Want Us To Know
We are being told by Democrats and the media that the following may be about to happen:
The Supreme Court, with its new bigger conservative majority, will strike down Obamacare. And when this happens, those with pre-existing conditions (which according to Joe Biden could be half the population of the country) will lose their coverage.
This was the primary reason Democrats offered for refusing to vote for Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. With a case pending before the Supreme Court that could result in Obamacare being found unconstitutional, we were warned that this would be an utter disaster for all with pre-existing conditions.
None of this is true, and none of it reflects how Obamacare actually works, or what would happen if it went away. Let’s step back:
One of the primary problems Obamacare was designed to address was that people who had lost their health insurance, or never had any in the first place, kept getting turned down for coverage because insurers didn’t want to take on such obviously large risks.
This was a real problem. With a health care system so tilted in favor of those with insurance, it was almost impossible for those who didn’t have coverage – and couldn’t get any because of their pre-existing conditions – to pay for their own care.
What was not happening, however, was this: Health insurers were not running around dropping current policy holders because they were sick or got sick. There may have been disputes about whether certain things could or should be covered, but if you had insurance and you were keeping up on your premiums, you were not being dropped from your coverage because a reason arose for you to need care.
This is important background because we have to know it to understand what could happen if Obamacare is thrown out.
Today, with Obamacare in full force for six years, many people have purchased insurance from private insurers via the exchanges set up under Obamacare. For many people their premiums are subsidized by the federal government, which is costing taxpayers more than $700 billion a year, but that’s a topic for another day.
If Obamacare is thrown out, people who are currently sick are not going to lose the coverage on which they are currently paying premiums. That was never the problem. As long as the private insurers continue to offer the policies, and the policyholders continue to keep up on their premiums, they’re not going to be dropped no matter how healthy or sick they might be.
What Democrats want you to believe is that everyone who has a “pre-existing condition” (i.e. is currently sick in some way) will immediately be dropped by their current insurer because Obamacare would no longer be around to stop that from happening. No. That wasn’t happening before Obamacare and it wouldn’t happen if Obamacare went away.
What could come into question, of course, is the problem of those who don’t currently have coverage and want to try to buy it in a post-Obamacare world.
President Trump says his own replacement plan would continue to require those with pre-existing conditions – but no insurance – to be accepted by insurers. It’s possible that, during the time it takes to draft and pass new legislation replacing Obamacare, some with pre-existing conditions and no coverage would have trouble getting coverage.
But that is not at all the same thing as everyone who is currently sick being dropped from their coverage, which is what Democrats want you to think would happen.
Another problem could be this: Obamacare allows people to buy policies they can’t afford, because the federal government subsidizes the cost of the policies beyond what people can pay.
Also, because covering people with pre-existing conditions causes insurers to lose money, the federal government subsidizes these losses under Obamacare. Those subsidies would be thrown into question if Obamacare is tossed out.
All of this argues not for the continuation of Obamacare, which was always built on economic fantasies and massive commitments of federal dollars, but for a new system that doesn’t force people to rely so heavily on third-party payers for every little health care service they might want to obtain.
But it’s simply a lie that everyone with “pre-existing conditions” (i.e. everyone who is sick in any way) will suddenly be dropped by their existing insurers if Obamacare goes away. Democrats are making this up out of whole cloth, and the media simply repeat what the Democrats say without any analysis of how Obamacare really works or of what would really happen.
You are being lied to.
By the way, it’s very unlikely the Supreme Court will strike Obamacare down because it can almost certainly sever the unconstitutional individual mandate without throwing out the entire law.
I wish they would throw out the entire law because it’s terrible and that would force Congress to start over. Then again, what we would get under a new Democratic Congress and a President Biden is probably even worse than Obamacare.
Maybe people should think about that before they vote against President Trump because he’s a boorish cad.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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