Republican Health Bill Could Remove Protections For Millions With Employer Health Insurance
50 Percent of Americans receive health care through employer plans, the Republican bill removes protections for them.
The details are still coming in on the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare and they are not pretty. But that’s not stopping Republicans in the House from racing to vote on their catastrophic bill Thursday.
And now a new report finds that the Republican plan could remove protections for millions of people who receive health insurance through their employers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there is a provision in the revised Republican plan that allows states to get waivers from Obamacare’s regulations on insurance companies, meaning insurance companies would no longer have to cover 10 specific types of health services required under Obamacare. Those services include things like prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization.
“The provision, part of a last-minute amendment, lets states obtain waivers from certain Affordable Care Act insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
About half the country gets their health insurance through employer-provided health plans.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that “Under the House bill, large employers could choose the benefit requirements from any state—including those that are allowed to lower their benchmarks under a waiver, health analysts said. By choosing a waiver state, employers looking to lower their costs could impose lifetime limits and eliminate the out-of-pocket cost cap from their plans under the GOP legislation.”
