Please call and ask your congressman to vote NO.
In this bill pre-existing conditions can get a premium 5X higher.
List of pre-existing conditions IS NOT SPECIFIED ANYWHERE IN THE BILL THAT I COULD FIND. So this is up to insurers. But a good definition is:
a condition, illness, or injury that can be identified as one that does not necessarily affect your overall good health but could affect the risk balance of all insureds
Read it again. You could have a condition that doesn’t affect YOUR health but ruins the pool. It could qualify. The thing is that insurers get to choose.
It could include things like seeing a therapist. That was considered a pre-existing condition before Obamacare. As were most mental health issues.
You will also note that there is probably a weight chart. Obesity is a condition that plausibly considered pre-existing.
You may think this doesn’t apply to you – but it definitely applies to someone you love. And let me be clear:
This bill penalizes you for losing coverage for more than a few months, by increasing premium by 30%. If you are working and poor, you can’t afford insurance so you don’t have it. You get it when you have an health disaster – A pre-existing condition. Now imagine:
- If you are older (50 -64) – they will be charging you up to 3X more than younger people.
- They will then charge you 5X that rate for the pre-existing condition.
- PLUS the 30% premium penalty for the break in coverage.
This is what will happen to people who used to be covered for an affordable amount under Obamacare.
They can’t deny you insurance, but they have effectively denied it to the working poor because the insurance will just as unaffordable as the medical care.
I won’t get into all the ways they cushioned it up for the people with money. But suffice to say – they make sure life is easier for people with money.
But the way they structured this, I think they have creeped the insurance cost barriers into middle class families as well.
This entire thing is going to fuck me. I have pre-existing conditions.
Please – call. Again. Please.
It's a Thought 
The answer that Americans have come to realize is Congress needs to make concerted efforts to improve the ACA, not repeal it. I would add it would be nice for the GOP to acknowledge their role in increasing premiums even more than they would have gone up normally by eliminating a significant portion of the funding to insurers as committed for their taking on adverse selection (this was a Marco Rubio led maneuver) and the lack of expansion of Medicaid in 19 states, led by GOP legislatures. The 31 states who did are seeing fewer personal bankruptcies and hospitals with better account receivables. Quoting the Republican Governor of Ohio and former Presidential candidate John Kasich, “Medicaid expansion is a no brainer.”
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Yes. The GOP is definitely part of what is wrong with the ACA.
But the GOP is what is wrong with the GOP too. It feels like they are falling apart from the inside out.
I continue to be surprised when they don’t get things done. This budget extension – I just am floored. It’s basically got no wins for them?
I’m torn between the feeling that they are in utter chaos and the feeling that maybe there is still some strain of sanity restraining them?
I continue to wish Kasich had been their candidate. Imagine how different it would be right now if Kasich were President.
I’m still more liberal than Kasich, but he represents a sane moderate middle. I would not spend all my time worrying.
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Agreed. I would have strongly considered Kasich.
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To further indicate that is all about style than substance, and this President cares little about the details, several Republican Congressional representatives did not like the AHCA bill they voted for per The Washington Post. They felt pressured to get Trump a win in the House. These same folks know the Senate will alter it significantly (which the GOP Senate leadership has already said) and it may not ever survive a reconciliation process. Yet, they needed to pass something.
The CBO will likely not be kind to this bill as they were the first one. These guys are running victory laps over screwing over 24 million Americans out of healthcare. To be frank, not waiting on the CBO scoring and voting for something only for political reasons is extremely poor stewardship and malfeasance in some respects. That is this Independent voter’s opinion. But, what do I know, I just try to be a voice for those who rarely have a place at the table and certainly not this table.
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They don’t even hide their utter disdain for being responsible. One of the Republican Congressmen, Chris Collins, openly admitted he didn’t read the bill. It’s sort of mind boggling.
I have no idea how we as a nation aren’t in a screaming rage over the treason allegations. Why isn’t congress making that into a huge thing? At this point, their slow shuffle on that is as suspect as Trump’s campaign.
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Right now it looks like the GOP wouldn’t have the votes to pass it in the House. Ryan allowed changes to the bill to satisfy the “tea party” wing of the party, but those changes have made it so toxic that the moderates (yes, there are some) are raising holy hell about how it would ruin the lives of their voters back home.
The GOP is basically broken at the moment. They embraced the far right extremists in order to try to take the White House, and now they’re paying for it and trying to cover up the blunders, lies and other BS coming out of the White House on a daily basis.
Some members of the GOP are fighting back now. Here in Wisconsin Walker’s budget was D.O.A. His own party gutted it of every single policy change that he tried to sneak in, something they’ve never done before. They’re arguing with him about the transportation budget, the education budget, pretty much everything. It’s interesting, down in Madison right now. Walker’s irritated a lot of people in his own party. While he had a chance at the White House they stuck around, gritted their teeth and pretended to present a unified front. But now he can’t get his own party to back his budget.
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Well, now we know they actually passed this ridiculous tax break disguised as a health care legislation. And it only took about 57 attempts. All this so that the pwesident could stage a Rose Garden victory party and say “See? I did get something done!” after which the Senate will save them from the disaster that would come from their dumb ideas actually being enacted.
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I don’t rely on the Senate saving anything. They are just as slimy.
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