Donald Trump’s Promise to Protect People with Pre-existing Conditions Another Cynical Political Ploy
Donald Trump has repeatedly accused his political rivals of planning to do exactly what his administration is already trying to do: dismantle healthcare protections for millions, including protections for pre-existing conditions. Trump promised an executive action on pre-existing conditions by the end of August, but has issued none.
Donald Trump’s facade of defending healthcare for vulnerable people is disingenuous at best, as his administration is trying to get the entirety of Obamacare struck down in court. Overturning the law would repeal Medicaid expansion, premium tax credits and health insurance marketplaces. Without the protections of Obamacare, insurers could once again:
- Place annual and lifetime limits on coverage
- Charge patients for preventive services
- Kick people under 26 off their parents’ plans
- Rate against certain conditions, making insurance plans unaffordable
- Rate against gender, again charging women many times more then men
- Increase costs for older individuals by an unregulated amount
- Carve out coverage for certain conditions, making pre-existing condition coverage meaningless
- Reopen the Medicare “donut hole”
Obamacare contains many protections, and coverage of pre-existing conditions is just one important piece of the law. To pretend he is defending pre-existing conditions with an unnecessary and absent executive order while trying to upend the whole healthcare market is a reckless and dangerous political stunt.
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Fact Quotes
In the midst of a global pandemic with the presidential election just months away, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care law that enabled millions of Americans to get insurance coverage and that remains in effect despite the pending legal challenge.
In the midst of a pandemic and without an alternative health plan of its own, the Trump administration formally called on the U.S. Supreme Court to completely strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Striking down the ACA would increase the number of uninsured people by 20 million, or 65 percent … Actual coverage losses would almost certainly be higher when accounting for the historic public health and economic crises that have caused many people to lose jobs or income, making many of them eligible for the ACA’s help. And striking down the law would end not only the ACA’s major coverage expansions — such as the Medicaid expansion, premium tax credits, and health insurance marketplaces ― but other important protections as well, harming tens of millions of people who would remain insured.
