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ICYMI: Insurers could charge huge premiums under Yoder-backed bill, health care experts say [Kansas City Star]

Insurers could charge huge premiums under Yoder-backed bill, health care experts say | Kansas City Star
By Lindsey Wise, Bryan Lowry
September 21, 2018
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article218597985.html

 

Rep. Kevin Yoder and other top House Republicans say they’re committed to protecting people with pre-existing conditions — but their big push to change current law could actually mean ballooning insurance bills for people with chronic illness, health experts say.

Republicans are struggling to defuse controversy about their plans to dramatically change the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Polls show that ending the law’s strong protections for people with pre-existing conditions is political poison for GOP candidates.

Yoder, R-Kansas, signed onto the Pre-existing Conditions Protection Act last week, shortly a week after oral arguments began in Texas for a GOP lawsuit to repeal Obamacare.

If successful, the lawsuit could also eliminate the law’s popular provision that bars insurers from denying health coverage for pre-existing conditions. Kansas is one of 20 GOP-led states that signed onto the suit.

Yoder’s antidote, though, is fraught with problems, independent experts agreed. “They have to cover you, they can’t exclude coverage of your pre-existing condition or deny you coverage, but they can charge you a million a month, they can charge you a deterrent premium,” said Karen Pollitz, senior fellow at Kaiser Health Family Foundation.

[…] As Democrats pound vulnerable Republican incumbents such as Yoder with ads accusing them of trying to rip voters’ health coverage away, he and other GOP lawmakers from the states pushing the lawsuit have been scrambling for ways to preserve the protections.

Yoder is locked in a tight race with Democrat Sharice Davids in a suburban Kansas City district that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016.

[…] Yoder also has said he supports a resolution introduced by 28 House Republicans that would express “the sense of the House of Representatives” that pre-existing conditions should be retained in law even if Obamacare amended or repealed.

The resolution, however, has no force of law.

“The resolution does absolutely nothing,’” Jost said.

Yoder’s co-sponsorship of the pre-existing conditions bill and his endorsement of the symbolic resolution do not impress health care advocates in Kansas, who noted the Overland Park Republican has repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“This is nothing but window dressing that attempts to make the public believe that he’s protecting their right to pre-existing conditions,” said Sheldon Weisgrau, the director of the Health Reform Resource Project, a Topeka-based non-profit that advocates for greater health care access.

Gayle Taylor-Ford, a 51-year-old resident of Overland Park in Yoder’s district, said the issue of pre-existing conditions is a deal-breaker for her this election.

“He (Yoder) says the right things, but how is he voting?” said Taylor-Ford, who owns a business that provides substance abuse treatment. She said she visited Yoder’s Washington office in March to voice her support for the Affordable Care Act.

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