Penna Dexter

Coverage of pre-existing health conditions has been a hot button in presidential debates and senate hearings for a Supreme Court nominee. In one debate, former Vice President Joe Biden argued that “100 million people who have pre-existing conditions” will lose their health insurance if the Trump Administration wins an Obamacare case set to be argued at the US Supreme Court November 10. This is false. Republican attorneys general are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. They contend that after federal lawmakers, in 2017, zeroed out the individual mandate’s penalty for lacking health insurance, the entire Affordable Care Act was rendered null and void. But there’s a bipartisan consensus that any healthcare system we implement must protect people with pre-existing conditions. President Trump insists on it. The 180 million Americans who have insurance through their employers automatically get their pre-existing conditions covered because of a law passed in the 1990s. This encompasses ninety percent of Americans with private health coverage. Part of the argument put forward by those supporting the passage of Obamacare was that people seeking individual insurance policies were sometimes denied coverage for their pre-existing conditions. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to fix this by requiring that all policies cover pre-existing conditions. But if you can’t afford insurance coverage, that guarantee doesn’t help you. According to Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Obamacare created a new class of uninsured—none of whom, of course, have the slightest protection against their pre-existing conditions.” She explains, in an article for National Review, “After premiums doubled and even tripled in some states, once Obamacare regulations took effect, individual market coverage became unaffordable and unusable for millions of middle-class and self-employed Americans earning too much to qualify for subsidies.” President Trump recently unveiled his American First Healthcare Plan, parts of which are already operational via executive order. It makes healthcare less expensive and emphasizes coverage of pre-existing conditions.