By Edwin Amenta and Drew Halfmann
 |
| The GOP celebrates the House vote to Repeal the ACA |
In 2017, Republicans almost succeeded
in destroying the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with
pre-existing conditions.
But they’d rather you forget all about
that. Facing tough re-election, they now are posing as protectors rather destroyers
of such protections.
A good example is Orange County Congresswoman
Mimi Walters. She voted for the Republican health care bill even though she had
pledged many times to preserve protections for pre-existing conditions. She even
took joyful selfies at President Trump’s party celebrating the bill. But in a recent
Twitter video,
she makes her promise again. She shows a photo of a baby covered in wires, her
constituent Callan. He was born with a severe congenital heart defect and
survived four open heart surgeries. Walters then stares into the camera and vows
to protect his access to health care. This pledge is hardly credible. She vowed
to protect people with pre-existing conditions before and then went back on her
word when it counted.
So why are pre-existing condition
protections so important? Because before the ACA was signed into law, insurance
companies could avoid patients who might use a lot of costly medical services
by refusing to sell them policies or by charging them exorbitant, often
unaffordable, rates. And insurance companies defined these conditions broadly
to include even common maladies like allergies, acne, or being prescribed an
anti-depressant.
That meant a lot of Americans simply
didn’t have access to health insurance.
The ACA ended those shady practices. It
required insurers to sell insurance to everyone and prohibited them from
charging discriminatory rates. The House GOP tried to roll back these
protections while dishonestly claiming to preserve them.
Sure, the Republican health legislation
required insurers to sell to everyone, but waivers in the bill meant that they could
charge patients according to their health status. Callan’s parents could buy him
insurance, but at what cost? Non-partisan analyses found that they and hundreds
of thousands like them would not have been able to afford it.
Protecting high-income people with pre-existing
conditions is not the same as protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
Under the failed Republican legislation,
the Congressional Budget Office estimated that some 23 million people would
have lost insurance coverage, all so corporations and the wealthy could get tax
cuts. Meanwhile, Republicans leaders now claim that we must cut Medicare to pay
for the budget deficits created by their most recent tax cuts (also for
corporations and the wealthy).
Republicans continue to tout their support
for pre-existing condition protections. Recently, some even sponsored a bill on
the matter. But this, too, was dishonest. The bill is merely intended to give vulnerable
Republicans cover for their unpopular health care vote. The sponsors know that
the GOP leadership will bury the bill and will turn to cutting health care
benefits if they retain power.
Despite their misleading claims, the
Republican position on health care is clear. You can have it if you can afford
it.
Edwin Amenta is Professor
of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where he writes and
teaches about social policy. He is the author of When
Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security. He can be contacted at
ea3@uci.edu.
Drew Halfmann is Associate
Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, where he writes
and teaches about health policy. He is the author of Doctors
and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Policy in the
United States, Britain and Canada. He can be contacted at dhalfmann@ucdavis.edu.
