Top Republicans Demand Obama Provide Coverage To People With Pre-Existing Conditions

[Tx4obama]

Top Republicans Demand Obama Provide Coverage To People With Pre-Existing Conditions

Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act more than three dozen times, ran on a pledge to eliminate the law on “day one,” and sought to underfund the measure at every opportunity. But since the Supreme Court upheld the ACA and President Obama won re-election the political dynamics of reform have changed: Republican governors are slowly embracing elements of the law and Congressional Republicans are no longer scheduling votes to repeal it.

In another sign of the growing political support for health reform — or the sense that opposing its most popular elements has become politically perilous — a group of top House Republicans have written a letter to President Obama asking him to preserve a temporary program included in the law that provides health care coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

The so-called Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) was designed as a bridge to the exchanges for families and individuals who don’t have an offer of coverage from an employer and cannot find insurance in the individual market. The $5 billion program, which covers only sick people is incredibly costly, and will soon stop processing new applicants.

Republicans however, are incensed, and are demanding that the White House shift funds from prevention or comparative effectiveness research to keep the PCIP running.

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Full article here: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/08/1690341/top-republicans-demand-that-obama-provide-coverage-to-people-with-pre-existing-conditions/

Well ain't that something.

[tridim]

1. The Repubs will be taking full credit for the ACA by 2014.

[Tx4obama]

2. And now a little something from a nutty Republican ...

Marco Rubio: I’ll Vote To Shut Down The Government Unless Obamacare Is Completely Defunded

During an interview on conservative host Hugh Hewitt’s talk radio program Thursday night, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined fellow Tea Party favorites Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in demanding that a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year include provisions to defund Obamacare in its entirety.

Over the course of the program, Rubio parroted the usual litany of wild — and widely debunked — conservative hysteria about the dire consequences that Obamcare will have on American businesses and the U.S. health care industry, asserting that he would only vote to avert a government shutdown if Obamcare implementation is halted completely: ...

-snip-

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/08/1690431/rubio-obamacare-shut-down/

[Scuba]

3. Not my Governer (sic), Squat Wanker.

[reteachinwi]

4. This is passing strange

Can there be method in their madness? Expose the ACA as too costly? Defund public health(read Planned Parenthood)?

[busterbrown]

5. You would think they might be up to something, but the truth of the matter is that..

they are just fucking stupid. They listen to Fox all day and believe every thing they hear on right wing extremist radio. They are beginning to figure out some stuff that is real....
They are just plain idiots..

[GoCubsGo]

6. Yep.

Most of them don't even know what's in the damn thing. I still keep hearing ignorant righties asking where they can "sign up for Obamacare", as if there is something to sign up for. Bunch of brain-dead idiots. And, they get that kind of shit from Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, Rubio, Cruz...

[bornskeptic]

7. No. There's nothing stupid about this. The PCIP is one part of the ACA that they like

and would probably keep if they could do healthcare policy their way. Removing people with pre-existing conditions from the pool would remove one of the major obstacles to their dream of a totally unregulated insurance system. Their letter demands that Obama take funds from the part of the act which they don't like to the part that they do. Also, the PCIP is not progressive economically. It makes insurance available to people with pre-existing conditions at prices similar to those paid by healthy people, if they can afford it. Thus fairly affluent people are subsidized as much as those with average income, while those with pre-existing conditions who are in lower income groups still can't afford coverage.

The PCIP will have no point when the ACA goes fully into effect in 2014, but most people don't know enough about how the ACA will work to understand this, so the Republican leadership appears to be taking up a popular cause - trying to provide insurance to people with pre-existing conditions - although that is actually going to happen, with subsidies for lower income people, anyway.

[annabanana]

8. Consistency is the hobgoblin of

of rational minds...