Rhetoric vs. Reality: Obamacare FAILS on Pre-Existing Conditions
Noting yesterday’s one-year anniversary of the House vote to repeal Obamacare, the White House issued a blog post claiming that the law protects sick patients – and that repealing it would allow insurance companies “to once again [sic] deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.” Compare that claim to a news story from Oklahoma, which noted that on Wednesday, a Democrat legislator in that state “filed legislation to ensure access to individual health insurance for Oklahoma children.”
The story raises an obvious question: If Obamacare prevented insurance companies from “deny[ing] coverage to children with pre-existing conditions,” as the White House claimed, why on earth is a Democrat state legislator introducing legislation “to ensure access” to coverage for those same children? The answer is simple – thanks to Obamacare, carriers in many states have stopped offering child-only policies, because the companies (rightly) fear that otherwise applicants would only apply once diagnosed with a costly medical condition.
It’s difficult to determine whose actions are more ironic: The Democrat legislator, for his belief that layering on even more state-level requirements could “solve” the problems created by Obamacare’s failed federal mandates, or the White House, for bragging about the ban on pre-existing conditions for children – without pointing out that thanks to their law, families in many states can no longer obtain coverage for their children. (Fat lot of good a ban on pre-existing conditions will do if you can’t buy insurance coverage at all.) Either way, it’s yet another sign of how Obamacare is falling short in a critical area, by actually reducing access to insurance.