Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a law seeking to end part of Affordable Care Act health insurance, often called Obamacare, and replace it with the Affordable Health Care Act, often called Trumpcare. How does this affect you?
For the present, it does not affect your health insurance but it may affect it substantially. For the law passed by the House to become a United States law, the Senate must pass the law, too, and the President must sign it. It is not clear that the Senate will pass the law and it has not done so yet. For now, the Affordable Care Act is in place and the law is the way it has been. If you count on Obamacare for your health insurance, the House passing this law has not changed anything.
Should you be worried? Many should. If the Senate passes the same law or a similar one on which the House and Senate can agree, some people may lose their health insurance or must pay a lot more to purchase it. People with preexisting conditions who need to buy insurance may be put into higher risk insurance pools. These people would have to pay substantially higher premiums that could be very hard to afford. Further, insurance companies that can now charge seniors three times more for their policies due to higher risks could be able to charge five times more.
People who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance In Pennsylvania may face severe cuts as Medicaid expansion may end. Medicaid expansion makes it so that many people below 138% of the federal poverty line qualify for health insurance. That program may begin to be defunded, making it so that Pennsylvania may have to go back to only covering only the poorest of those people and cover fewer medical services and medicine. Some people may be allowed to remain on expanded Medicaid, but a one month lapse in Medicaid may mean that they could be considered new applicants and may not qualify. It is also unclear if state’s would keep the program. People relying on Home and Community Based Services that provide home and nursing care to people so that they can remain in their homes instead of in nursing homes could face drastic cuts.
All people with insurance will be at risk of having their policies cover fewer things, including some more expensive treatments and medicines, as all health policies will not have to cover many basic things the Affordable Care Act required to be minimum things covered. People likely to benefit under the House bill are people with limited medical expenses and higher income.
A good source to keep up on this issue in Pennsylvania is the Pennsylvania Health Law Project’s webpage at www.phlp.org. A good summary of the differences in the bill passed yesterday and the Affordable Care Act is on the Kaiser Family Foundations webpage at http://kff.org/interactive/proposals-to-replace-the-affordable-care-act/ . The bill is not law yet, and many things parts of the bill may change before it becomes law so that it affects more or less of your benefits. For now, your health insurance remains intact.