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Trump’s Sabotage of Obamacare to Push Up Premiums, Exclude Preexisting Conditions
No issue in the past 13+ months of Trump's reign of terror / stupidity / embarrassment has drawn more strong outcry than healthcare. That's truly saying something considering the amount of topics that we've loudly dissented about. Our efforts even led to several Republican senators supposedly saving the healthcare system we have, which isn't great but far better than the Trump / GOP alternative.
Yet as we reported here in January, Trump and his people continue efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Healthcare will cost us MORE and be less available due to the irrational steps that no Executive Branch should be allowed to take.
The Trump administration is quietly dismantling the Affordable Care Act, taking a series of regulatory steps that will make it easier for insurance companies to sell plans that exclude patients with preexisting conditions or don’t cover basic services like maternity care, mental health treatment, and prescription drugs.
Trump's administration will gleefully brag of their efforts to weaken Obamacare’s insurance rules, enacting changes that will hurt Americans who are older and sicker while benefiting the young and the healthy.
The Trump changes allow insurance companies to sell the skimpier plans for a year [instead of 90 days], encouraging many more people to buy them and use them as a more regular source of coverage. These plans are likely to attract young and healthy consumers, leaving behind a pool of older and sicker patients in the Obamacare markets and driving up the prices there.
The Trump administration’s efforts to loosen health insurance rules will increase premiums for Obamacare plans by.... 18 percent, on average....
Keep in mind the change in the December tax law bill and another change via executive action:
(1) Expanding access to short-term health policies, which can place limits on benefits and charge higher rates to sick people, draws healthy people out of the insurance pool.
(2) The tax law signed in December eliminated the requirement that all Americans have coverage or pay a fine. [Thus healthy people will simply not get coverage.]
Combined, the result is higher premiums for those who continue to buy insurance under the law.
PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS are being made into a death sentence again because coverage becomes unavailable or too expensive to obtain from private insurers.
Short-term coverage is allowed to skirt several of the health care law’s core provisions: Plans can deny people insurance based on their medical history, charge them higher premiums because of their preexisting medical conditions, and craft skimpy benefits packages that will appeal mostly to young and healthy people..... sicker Americans, who won’t be allowed into these skimpy new plans.
They will stay behind in the Obamacare insurance marketplace. And those without insurance subsidies will see their premiums go up as the healthy people head for the exits.
This is happening. Be Smart about it. Share the information. Actively Dissent.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/22/17033588/trump-obamacare-preexisting-conditions