Despite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions, Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials
Despite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions, Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials
While leading GOP opposition to health care reform over the past few months, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) has simultaneously insisted that Republicans believe in helping Americans with preexisting conditions get health care. Currently, “in 44 states, it’s legal for health insurers to deny coverage to people who have previously been sick, or charge them more for treatment.”
“And so there are a number of things that Republicans believe are essential,” Boehner told NPR in September. “We believe that making sure that people who have preexisting conditions have access to affordable health insurance.” On Fox News last week, Boehner said that Republicans wanted to focus on helping “those with preexisting conditions“:
BOEHNER: Most of the 36 million that they say they’re going to cover already have access to some type of government program, or even their employer program, or have chosen just not to have health insurance. When you really boil this down, there are about seven or eight million people in America, those with preexisting conditions, those who are what I would describe as the working poor, and some early retirees who have a difficult time getting health insurance. We can help those people get health insurance and still bring down the cost of health insurance for the 85 percent of Americans who have it and think they pay too much for it.
Watch it:
But when Boehner previewed the House Republicans’ alternative health care plan for reporters yesterday, he admitted that the GOP’s proposal “will not prevent insurance providers from barring clients based on preexisting conditions.” “We do encourage more states to have high-risk pools,” said Boehner, which he called “a place where people with preexisting conditions will have an opportunity to get affordable health insurance.”
Roll Call points out, however, that “most states have such pools, but they often are much more expensive than regular insurance and have had only limited success in reducing the ranks of the uninsured.” President Obama and the Senate Finance Committee have also embraced increased funding for high risk pools, but only as a stop gap until 2013, when insurers would be prohibited from denying people coverage based on preexisting conditions under their legislation.
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Boehner is an @sshole. A drunken @sshole with a monster tan mind you, but an @sshole just the same.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:53 amClueless.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 amDespite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions, Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials
– - Yo John, the melanomas you’re going to get from those tanning beds is a preexisting condition.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 amSo you still got no health care bill, that about it bohner?
Just re-write what we have now and call that your “new” bill.
I don’t think so.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 amThe GOP “plan” is such unmitigated bullshit.
*DOES NOT prevent insurance companies from denying pre-existing conditions
*DOES NOT have any viably method to control costs
*DOES NOT mandate large corporations to provide health insurance
The entire plan is based around selling insurance across state lines, tort reform, and allowing small businesses to pool for health insurance.
Jeez. At least McCain’s “plan” had tax cuts and vouchers.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 amSee we will just rewrite our plan on new paper (canary yellow be nice), and present it as a whole new bill no one will notice, i call it my pee in my blue suite pants tactic, it makes us all warm and fuzzy but no one will notice the ploy…..
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 amBoner:
‘What I say is more important than what I do’…
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 amSplitting people up into different pools is precisely the problem, Boehner. If insurance companies are going to be given a legal monopoly to cover people in the various states, then they should be required to cover everybody who applies to them, regardless of current health, put all of their customers in one pool, and charge everybody the same rate. Period. What you are trying to justify, Boehner, is some non-existent right on the part of the insurance companies to make a profit off our ill health. (Never mind that this implies a corporation has rights just like a citizen, which it should not have.) This is a right they should not have, and only a scumbag would fight to protect it.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 amUnlike the GOP budget, at least this one has words and numbers and stuff.
And if they can say that the Dem plan is gonna lead to death squads, why can’t they also lie and say their plan includes things that it doesn’t ?
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 amI really can’t stand this man. Not just the health Care fiasco but he had the balls to apoligize for BACKING Dede Whatever her name is. I can’t belive how these guys are kow-towing to the fringe. They are drinking the Kool-Aid that Limpball and Sarah the Baracuda is serving them.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:06 amIt took Boner and his cohorts all year to roll out that piece of shit? Good thing his 20-percenters are dumb enough to believe they’re actually trying to do something. The rest of us? Not so much.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 amThere is no “plan.”
The repiggies want to maintain the status quo.
The Boner is an underqualified moron who has zero expertise in health insurance issues.
His head his stuck firmly up his posterior, with no view of the normal horrors that citizens must undergo in order to maintain some sort of health insurance.
He gets his free “socialized” health care, along with his wife and his dependents.
We are stuck with the bill for that stupid freeloader.
Had enough of the repiggies yet?
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:11 amThe only reason why Boehner rolled this out is because he had to. He was pinned last week, so they slapped this piece of crap together and dare to say ‘This is our solution’ What a creep. In facr, all the Repugs are back-stabbing creeps. They have no problem with Americans dying in the street. They are immoral cretins.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 amThe Republican ‘Plan’ is to maintain status quo so that the insurance companies keep funnelling money into the Republicans’ pockets.
The general public can just go to hell.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:14 amHow fitting that this stupid GOPshite is on CroxNews…
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:16 amevangenital says:
Had enough of the repiggies yet?
I’m proud to report I’ve never EVER voted for a repiggie. I grew up in a strictly Democratic, middle-class household. My Mom is 80 and has been an election worker for about 50 years. Many of those years she was also a Democratic committee woman. I would sit an election out before I’d pull a repiggie lever.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 amThe GOP “plan” is actually worse than doing nothing.
The “plan” seems to actually further de-regulate the health insurance industry, and would actually reward the damn corporations by opening up a national market for them. Take, for example, an insurance company in OH that manages to keep premiums artifically low by excluding large swaths of the population. They can now sell their product in WV, where coal miners can purchase it because the mining corp they work for won’t have to provide insurance. In a few years time, this insurance company decides to boost premiums and drop the coal miners, who, after years of labor, have developed serious lung issues. OH company makes a bundle and the miners now either go uninsured, or look towards charities and the meager free clinics to find something to ease that hacking cough.
When the jobless rates begin to fall come February or so, the voters will remember that THIS is what the GOP thinks of anyone who isn’t a member of Congress or on the board of a Fortune 500.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 amThis is worse then my latest movie.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 amDespite Rhetoric About Preexisting Conditions, Boehner’s Health Care Plan Doesn’t Bar Denials
It’s time for the good people of Ohio to deny Boner returning to office.
It’s the least you can do, folks. This assclown helped ship your mfg jobs to China, & is proud of it because it reduces labor costs.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 amNever mind the fact you’ve lost your job; the owners are making MORE MONEY!
Nice of the Big Orange Head to prove again that the health insurers own the Republicans. I just hope those same companies don’t manage to rent enough Democrats to stop a decent reform bill.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 amThe Republican healthcare plan only consists of one thing… Do nothing.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:34 amI’m going to play the devil’s advocate here; now, why is it we have to wait until 2013 for it to be illegal for insurance companies to deny us coverage based on pre-existing conditions? I can see waiting until next year maybe, but not over 3 years for a legislation for something that should have been law from day 1.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:36 amThis bozo just proves to me that the people who voted for him don’t have a clue. They are more than willing to kiss decent health care and jobs good-bye because this guy has a ‘R’ next to his name. As Frank Castanza would say, ‘Serenity Now!’
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:36 amGive us your tired, your
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:37 amPoor, your yearning masses…hell
Give us your money
I broke my leg in Feb of 1989. Compound fractures to the femur, tibia and fibia. I had to have skin grafts, bone grafts, a rod through my femur (still there) and had to wear a hoffman device for four months so the tibia and fibia bones would heal.
To this day, every insurance policy I have had since then considers this a “pre-existing” condition and have not paid for anything when I go to the doctor or whatever I may need for the first two years that I have had the policy (always through work).
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what the hell seeing the obgyn or the dentist has to do with breaking my leg 20 years ago. It’s all bullshit.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:43 amDo conservatives really believe that a person who is denied insurance in a given state because of pre-existing conditions can go get insurance in another state? What? Other states’ companies don’t care about pre-existing conditions?
Do conservatives really believe insurance companies will take people with pre-existing conditions if they enact tort reform? Why?
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 amThe working impoverished
Legalized by minimum wage
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:53 amBoehner: “We do encourage more states to have high-risk pools”
Hey moron! Those are PUBLIC OPTIONS, but public options just full of the riskiest patients!! This is the MOST expensive way to do reform!!
Even the health insurance industry has admitted that if the risk pool is large and includes new healthy patients (via mandates) then they won’t have to over charge or deny people with pre-existing conditions. Why don’t the so-called fiscal Republicans get this basic, simple fact of economics?!
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:00 pm“Our plan is over at [the Congressional Budget Office],” Boehner said. “We expect to be ready here in the next several days. I want a real debate on our proposal, a real debate and a vote.”
and
Republicans will be allowed to have a substitute on the floor but they must meet certain conditions, according to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), including that the GOP release the bill 72 hours before a possible floor vote.
Boehner told reporters he was optimistic that Republicans would have their bill ready by the time Democrats introduce their final manager’s amendment.
and
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office released a “fact sheet” late Monday afternoon to alert the media that it has been “138 days since Congressional Republicans promised they would release comprehensive health care reform legislation – and still nothing.”
So the Repugs been promising this for 138 days and yet it’s turning into some kind of foot race?
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pmTo IgnoranceIsNotBliss:
Your situation sucks. It simply sucks. And it puts the lie to those who oppose a public option because they feel lucky to have employer based insurance.
Employer based insurance is not all that. A broken leg, decades healed, is a pre-existing condition. Medications are being dropped from even group plans. Premiums for employer-based insurance are going up.
What’s so great about employer based insurance?
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pmThis is just business as usual. If private insurance companies are not specificaly forbidden by law from denying insurance to folks with preexisting conditions then they will find a way to do it. Boehnor knows this which makes his proposal disingenuous as well as ineffective. It never ceases to astound me how the Republican party and blue dog democrats are willing to let people die to protect corporate profits.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pmWhat a Boner.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pmI thought Boner was a pre-existing condition. I think this mean that he doesn’t ‘get’ health care insurance, which certainly makes sense. Some concepts are difficult for the pseudo-con brain, which itself is an unproven concept, especially in the sense of not having any demonstrated existence in this universe. But I digress…
This fracking idiot didn’t have a bill yesterday, why should anyone take him seriously today. The pseudo-cons certainly don’t have anything that improves the current system in any way; it’s probably just a mechanism for shoveling more money into the health care insurance corporations.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm@ 24. Cheeseflap …
Thanks, cheeseflap, ya nailed it. As always, succinct and to the point.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pmRoll Call points out, however, that “most states have such pools, but they often are much more expensive than regular insurance and have had only limited success in reducing the ranks of the uninsured.”
This statement is absolutely correct. Many states have high risk pools for other types of insurance and these pools have the highest risks. The insurance pools cover auto insurance to general liability. The people and companies that end up in the pool pay far higher rates than ordinary insurance. A health insurance high risk pool would end up with people who have chronic, terminal and people who are approaching retirement age. No insurance company will want to take any part of the pool because it will be unprofitable even if the state subsidizes the insurance. If an insurance company was forced to take some of the high risk people, they would surely have all sorts of conditions and copays that would make the insurance worthless to a person in the pool. In other insurance pools, the people or companies can get out of the pool as soon as the risk is attenuated. This would not be so with a health insurance high risk pool.
The insurance companies would love to sell across state lines without any of the state restrictions. This can be accomplished if the feds were to proscribe certain minimum requirements for all state insurance regulations that would preempt the state laws if they fell below the minimum requirements. I would bet that if this sort of plan was proposed to allow the companies to sell across state lines. the insurance companies would oppose it. It would defeat the ability of the companies to sell without tough restrictions.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:38 pmMr. Kristol was true to his word and gave a Republican Health Plan to Boner. Let’s see how Americans feel about a Columnist writing a Bill and not an elected Law Maker. Life is funny as Senator McCain’s fomer campaign worker now has no job and no insurance. This man even has a pre existing condition. After watching the long lines in every State were people with no Doctor are waiting to get the H1N1 shot. I guess the Law Makers missed that on the news since they never go back to their districts to see what the people want.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm“We believe that making sure that people who have preexisting conditions have access to affordable health insurance.”
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 pmYes I remember all the times you railed and wept for the uninsurable during those years of ‘pukelican rule…
As pags2 said: A high-risk health insurance pool would do the same thing to costs as the current high-risk auto insurance pools do.
Not at all. In fact, it would be much, much more expensive, IF you can get covered at all.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:55 pmI wonder what 62 year old, chain-smoking John Boehner’s premiums would be under his own plan. $3500 a month? Could he even get coverage?
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:29 pm