Jonathan Chait: Trump's Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Jonathan Chait
JD Vance admits Trump's "concept of a plan" is to let insurance companies charge way more for people with a preexisting condition

Vance: Trump’s Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions

The concept of a plan is pretty horrifying.

By Jonathan Chait

the national interest

8:15 A.M.

Donald Trump infamously said at the presidential debate he had the “concept of a plan” to replace Obamacare. As is often the case when Trump commits verbal self-harm, it fell to J.D. Vance to turn his car wreck of a statement into an intelligible position.

What Vance came up with is not only surprising but, if understand properly, far more damaging than Trump’s original statement. The Trump plan, according to Vance, is to permit insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.

Vance explained the Trump plan during an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker: “He, of course, does have a plan for how to fix American health care, but a lot of it goes down, Kristen, to deregulating insurance markets, so that people can actually choose a plan that makes sense for them.”

Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare. In that world, prior to 2014, it was very difficult to find affordable coverage unless you were on Medicare, Medicaid, or got insurance through your employer. There was a market for individual insurance, and it was possible to buy plans if you didn’t get coverage through a government plan or through work. But that market was dominated by “adverse selection” — the only way insurers could make money was to weed out any customers likely to need medical care.

/snip

[dalton99a]

1. Typical GOP plan: Deny care.

[ck4829]

2. It's time to demonetize the healthcare system

[Jspur]

3. Basically, he has no plan but will attempt to repeal the

ACA for the 100th time and to go back to the old shitty system that existed before ACA. As someone who suffers from Asthma, I truly hate these fuckers. I never did anything to get my Asthma. I was just born with it. It's never held me back my whole entire life, but I hate how these fuckers want to punish me financially for having this condition.

[NGeorgian]

4. I was an insurance agent before Obamacare...............

I had 50 year old clients who wanted health insurance with a $20,000 deductible. If overweight but otherwise healthy no company would insure them.

[haele]

5. Even if you had employer healthcare -

Unless you worked for the Government (State or Federal), your employer's costs went up if there were too many employees with pre-existing medical conditions, were over 45, were smokers, or wanted family care. Oh, and there was a limit, before your employer had to push you into the basic catastrophic coverage or drop you or your family member altogether. Laz was around $175k - about one year, if he had another spell that put him in the hospital - from having to be dropped from my employer's insurance after 10 years working with them when the ACA kicked in. He would have had to apply for Medicaid, because no way in hell could we afford the high risk pool.

And those insurance costs would be passed on to the employees.

Haele