July 25, 2012--Pre-Existing Kidney
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this week ran the numbers after the Supreme Court struck down a little-noticed part of the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare).
Most paid attention to the mandate part, the part that requires almost everyone to purchase health insurance if it is not already provided by their employer. Chief Justice Roberts was the swing vote, finding that the penalty, or fine, that anyone refusing to buy health insurance will be required to pay is not a penalty or a fine but a tax. And as such the requirement to pay that tax fell within the historic prerogative of Congress.
But the Medicaid section was deemed unconstitutional because states, the court ruled, should be allowed to make their own decisions about how to offer Medicare coverage to their poorest citizens. It is not for the federal government to require certain forms of compliance, even when it provides 100 percent of the funding.
Go figure. And that is what the CBO did.
They estimate that because of the ruling up to 3 million will be uninsured and left to their own devices. There will of course be some cost savings, and that should make the GOP feel better about all the unnecessary medical-related deaths that will be the result of this. After all, to the Tea Party (which is what the Grand Old Party has become) the unfettered free market is all about the survival of the fittest.
But much that is good managed to survive Supreme Court scrutiny. For example, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. And because of various cost-sharing offsets in the ACA it will not cost people with, say, pre-existing cancer their life savings to buy insurance. Equally important, the Act forbids lifetime caps on the provision of care. Thus, someone in the midst of expensive chemotherapy will not be cut off when she or he reaching a stipulated dollar maximum.
But until the law takes full effect a year and a half from now, assuming Republicans are unable to defund it, situations such as the following will still pertain--
As reported in the New York Times, when 33-year-old Erika Royer lost kidney function as a side effect of lupus, unless she was able to obtain a new kidney, she was told she had only a few months to live.
Her 53-year-old father could provide a perfect match, and did--he donated one of his kidneys to his stricken daughter. As a result she is doing fine, her lupus is under control, and with one functioning kidney she was able to resume a normal life.
Her father, on the other hand, who is thus far healthy and physically active after his gift of life, has a problem. A big problem. He cannot find any insurance company willing to sell him a health care policy because he has a pre-existing condition--he has only one kidney!
If Radburn Royer can make it to January 2014, he will be able to secure health insurance. That is unless Republicans in Congress with a Mitt Romney in the White House are, as they promise, able to repeal it or, minimally, cut off its funds. Elections, as they say, have consequences. The 3 million no longer Medicaid eligible know this as will the rest of us come November.
Most paid attention to the mandate part, the part that requires almost everyone to purchase health insurance if it is not already provided by their employer. Chief Justice Roberts was the swing vote, finding that the penalty, or fine, that anyone refusing to buy health insurance will be required to pay is not a penalty or a fine but a tax. And as such the requirement to pay that tax fell within the historic prerogative of Congress.
But the Medicaid section was deemed unconstitutional because states, the court ruled, should be allowed to make their own decisions about how to offer Medicare coverage to their poorest citizens. It is not for the federal government to require certain forms of compliance, even when it provides 100 percent of the funding.
Go figure. And that is what the CBO did.
They estimate that because of the ruling up to 3 million will be uninsured and left to their own devices. There will of course be some cost savings, and that should make the GOP feel better about all the unnecessary medical-related deaths that will be the result of this. After all, to the Tea Party (which is what the Grand Old Party has become) the unfettered free market is all about the survival of the fittest.
But much that is good managed to survive Supreme Court scrutiny. For example, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. And because of various cost-sharing offsets in the ACA it will not cost people with, say, pre-existing cancer their life savings to buy insurance. Equally important, the Act forbids lifetime caps on the provision of care. Thus, someone in the midst of expensive chemotherapy will not be cut off when she or he reaching a stipulated dollar maximum.
But until the law takes full effect a year and a half from now, assuming Republicans are unable to defund it, situations such as the following will still pertain--
As reported in the New York Times, when 33-year-old Erika Royer lost kidney function as a side effect of lupus, unless she was able to obtain a new kidney, she was told she had only a few months to live.
Her 53-year-old father could provide a perfect match, and did--he donated one of his kidneys to his stricken daughter. As a result she is doing fine, her lupus is under control, and with one functioning kidney she was able to resume a normal life.
Her father, on the other hand, who is thus far healthy and physically active after his gift of life, has a problem. A big problem. He cannot find any insurance company willing to sell him a health care policy because he has a pre-existing condition--he has only one kidney!
If Radburn Royer can make it to January 2014, he will be able to secure health insurance. That is unless Republicans in Congress with a Mitt Romney in the White House are, as they promise, able to repeal it or, minimally, cut off its funds. Elections, as they say, have consequences. The 3 million no longer Medicaid eligible know this as will the rest of us come November.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:57 AM
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