Preexisting conditions: The scourge that can keep people from obtaining health insurance. No question, that needs to change and Obamacare was supposed to do that. Indeed, as I have written about here, HHS has currently authorized state pool policies for such people that is now in effect. In other words, people with preexisting conditions can obtain coverage now.
But very few are. From the Wall Street Journal editorial “The 8,011-Person Crisis:”
To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in. Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”
So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured. States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.
My gosh.
Is it the cost? Perhaps, but the plan subsidizes 65% of the premiums. So, what’s going on?
That so few have grabbed this lifeline suggests that the reality of pre-existing conditions isn’t nearly as grim as the President continues to claim. A shelf of academic research says the same thing, by the way.
I don’t know about that. But if true, we may have turned ourselves into pretzels—and Obama may have dashed his popularity on the rocks—for little purpose.
HHS is going to cut the premiums even further to try and induce people to buy the policies. I hope they do. This is an approach I would like to see remain when the law is deconstructed.
But if that doesn’t work, we can’t hand feed people. If the uninsurable refuse to be insured, there is only so much a compassionate country can do.
