At Least 6.3 Million With Pre-Existing Conditions At Risk Under GOP Health Plan
A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that at least 6.3 million people with pre-existing conditions would be at risk of losing health care under the bill that Republicans passed out of the House in April.
The Kaiser study noted that those 6.3 million Americans would face higher premiums for insurance under the Republican plan.
The Republican bill would undo Obamacare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, leaving millions vulnerable to higher prices and potentially losing care.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
The Congressional Budget Office estimated based on an earlier version of the GOP plan that 24 million Americans would lose insurance coverage as a result of the Republican bill. The new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that the consequences of the bill could, in fact, be worse.
The previous CBO projection didn’t include the new Republican amendment removing pre-existing conditions protections.
This is how the Kaiser Family Foundation explains it:
People with pre-existing conditions would likely face large premium surcharges under an AHCA waiver, according to the analysis, as insurers would be unable to decline coverage based on a person’s medical history, a practice that was permitted in nearly all states before it was prohibited by the Affordable Care Act in 2014. An earlier analysis from the Foundation estimated that 27 percent of non-elderly adults have a condition that would have led to a coverage refusal in the pre-ACA market.
The new analysis also identifies a second group of people who could be at risk of higher premiums: those with pre-existing conditions now buying their own insurance. It finds that an estimated 3.8 million adults, or about 25 percent of all adult enrollees in the 2015 individual insurance market, had a pre-existing condition that could subject them to higher premiums under an AHCA community rating waiver if they don’t maintain continuous coverage.
