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Consumer Groups Condemn GOP Bills To Eliminate Consumer Protections

Forty-eight national and state consumer advocacy organizations have released a letter condemning the GOP’s recent legislation to repeal “the medical loss ratio provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and prohibit, in perpetuity, the enforcement of other important consumer insurance protections.”

Both measures are going to be debated during Thursday’s Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing. Responding to the draft bill eliminating the “grandfather regulations” that allow health plans in existence before the law went into effect to avoid abiding by health reform’s benefits standards and consumer protections — so long as employers or individual policies don’t significantly change their policies — the groups write:

This draft legislation wipes out these safeguards, taking away the new protections consumers have recently earned and those they stand to gain in the future. This would impose higher costs for preventive care and reinstate lifetime limits on benefits. It would allow exclusions of coverage for pre-existing conditions in perpetuity, locking in disparate treatment of millions of people. It would increase the number of uninsured by taking away the coverage of many young adults who are newly insured through their parents’ health plans. Just this week, the Census reported insurance gains for about 500,000 young adults, due in large part to this provision.

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