Ted Eytan
Rally in support of the Affordable Care Act, February, 2017 at The White House, Washington, D.C.
Congressional candidates of both parties are now promising they’ll make sure Americans with pre-existing conditions get medical insurance; but unless those candidates tell us how they’re going to pay for those promises, we better not believe them.
Pre-existing conditions are health problems like asthma, diabetes, or cancer and, at last count, affect over 52 million non-elderly American adults. Some of these Americans have jobs with health care benefits, but many don’t.
Democratic Senate candidates in battleground states are placing their final bets on public support for covering people with pre-existing conditions: in Missouri, Claire McCaskill has re-christened her campaign, “your health care, your vote” and Bill Nelson in Florida and Joe Manchin in West Virginia are following suit.
Half of TV ads in congressional races discuss healthcare and that the midterms now “are officially about health care.”
In an October 13 article, the Charleston Gazette-Mail mused, “Ask Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., about almost anything, and his answer sidles over to ‘pre-existing conditions.’ ” In Florida, Nelson’s attacks on his Republican opponent are highlighting his opponent’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Overall, the Democrats' Senate campaign committee’s betting on it. Wesleyan Media Project says half of TV ads in congressional races discuss healthcare and that the midterms now “are officially about health care.”
But keeping a promise to treat all non-elderly Americans who have pre-existing conditions is expensive. To make good on a promise to cover all Americans with pre-existing conditions, a politician needs a plan that would raise enough money to pay for it.
One such plan already exists; it’s called the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The ACA used federal dollars to pay for treating pre-existing conditions with a huge expansion of Medicaid; it also mandated people without pre-existing conditions to buy medical insurance, putting more money into the pool needed to pay for treating pre-existing conditions. With that plan, millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions got coverage. This is the plan that Republicans have fought tooth and nail, attempting to repeal or undermine it about seventy times.
To make good on a promise to cover all Americans with pre-existing conditions, a politician needs a plan—and one such plan already exists.
Republicans who say they’re for covering people with pre-existing conditions point to two Congressional bills that they say would accomplish this. One is a House of Representatives resolution. As it’s only a vague resolution to try passing a bill protecting coverage for pre-existing conditions if a now-pending lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general succeeds, it has no force of law and would protect no one; it therefore would cost nothing.
The other is a Senate bill with a huge “exclusions” loophole, that allows insurance companies to still deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. In his statement on the bill, the bill’s author gives no indication of how he’d get the funds to pay treating pre-existing conditions.
In fact, neither the resolution nor the bill raises the money needed to treat pre-existing conditions.
There's no free lunch when it comes to covering people with pre-existing conditions. One way or another, we’ve all got to chip in or it won’t happen. And we can only believe candidates’ promises on this subject when they say where they’d get the money to pay for them. The Democrats have an answer to that question; Republicans have none.