Last week the U. S. Supreme Court delivered a verdict in the health care case that can only be described as surprising. Few people appeared to believe that the Obama-backed package of health care reforms would survive wholly intact. Now that the dust has settled from the Supreme Court shocker, we can begin to take stock as to how the decision stands to affect the picture of American health care.
Since the ruling was handed down last week, we have had a cycle of Sunday morning talk show episodes. Of the more telling was Speaker of the House John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) appearance on Meet the Press with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell substituting for Bob Schieffer. O’Donnell repeatedly asked the speaker what specific portions of the health care law that Republicans intended to repeal. Repeatedly, Boehner evaded or refused to answer the question.
As such, it’s incumbent upon us to ask what terrible calamities of justice Boehner and his colleagues might want undone. How about the expansion of coverage for Medicare recipients? Letting our elderly, fixed-income parents and grandparents face mounting hospital bills and increased likelihood of insufficient care is unthinkable, if not outright immoral.
Also of note for those on Medicare, under the Affordable Health Care Act, annual wellness visits are provided at no additional cost, as are certain preventive care services, such as immunizations and screenings for cancer or diabetes. People with Medicare Part D now receive discounts on prescription drugs while in the no-man’s land “doughnut hole.” In 2011, this provision resulted in a savings of $2.1 billion or an average of $604 per person, on prescription drugs for 3.6 million people in Medicare. The Part D discounts will gradually increase until 2020, when the doughnut hole will disappear. Moreover, the law gives the government new tools with which to fight waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare program — which adds about 10 years to the solvency of Medicare.
Perhaps Boehner would have us repeal the extension of coverage for younger people. With the current law, young people can stay on their parents insurance until age 26. At a time when college degrees hold less of a promise for full employment than ever before (and average student loan debt burden has sky-rocketed), why shouldn’t we give kids one more toss into the financial deep end? Having a generation of young people brought up with no health care safety net “insures” a generation of middle aged and elderly people with greater health problems, shorter lives and lessened productivity.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Then there’s the end to exclusion for pre-existing conditions. This was perhaps the most grievously unconscionable “free market” atrocity that the insurance industry was allowed to visit upon the American people. What makes this practice all the more unethical is the fact that merely having a test for some condition was often enough to put a person into the “high risk” (i.e. very expensive) or uninsurable category. Just to be clear, you need not have the condition for which you were tested, just having the test was frequently sufficient. Also in 2014, new health insurance “exchanges” will provide better insurance access and more options to self-employed people, small businesses and others who have been denied coverage or were unable to find affordable coverage.
Collateral to coverage of preexisting conditions, as long as you pay your premiums, an insurance company can no longer drop your coverage if you become sick or disabled. An insurance company can no longer place lifetime dollar limits on your health coverage.
Beyond this, many private health insurance plans must now cover more preventive care services, such as mammograms and other screenings, at no additional cost to the insured. While we recognize the package of legislation is controversial, it was necessary. It was necessary because the privately managed market had failed too many Americans and expected the rest of us to pick up the tab. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it is a good start.
The irony is that many Republicans want to repeal the health care initiative, thereby tossing out the individual mandate to buy insurance that, by the way, Mitt Romney supported in 2006 when he was governor of Massachusetts and was putting in place Romneycare in that state. In short, Republicans are supporting those whose idea of health insurance is not to have any but who know that they will be taken care of on the taxpayer’s tab. At the same time, Democrats who support the health plan want individuals to take personal responsibility for their own health needs by requiring them to purchase health insurance. Call it a tax if you want, which is how the Supreme Court looked at it, but the only way health care costs are going to be controlled is if we all are covered.
The health care initiative has been the law of the land, and now that it has passed Supreme Court muster, it’s secure in that status. It’s time, as Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark, put it, to end the spin and work toward making the law better.