To hear Democratic politicians and their national media handmaidens bellow, you'd think a new health care law was passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last week.
You'd think the law that such a measure intended to replace was used by a majority of people in the country, was affordable for users, was efficient and didn't cost the federal government - through its taxpayers - a dime.
Of course, none of the above is true.
What is true is that the United States House of Representatives passed a health care bill last week that now will be considered by the U.S. Senate.
That's it.
That said, the House bill has zero chance, as is, of passing the Senate. Zero.
All of the bellyaching by Democrats and the media is to drum up opposition to any - any - health care bill Republicans propose to replace the ironically named Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. In 2010, Democrats passed the health care bill without involving Republicans in the process. Now they steadfastly refuse to become involved in any measure that replaces it, though it is collapsing of its own accord.
Because we believe a new health care measure should be considered and created by members of both parties, we believe Republicans should let the ACA fail on its own. That would put more pressure on both parties to collaborate to create a solution that would be more workable for everyone.
Lacking that - and cooperation still could happen if no Republican health care bill can be passed by both house of Congress and signed by Trump - the best option is for the Senate to forget any artificial deadlines and take its usual glacial time to create a health care bill that is an improvement over the House bill. Such a bill would preserve, in some way, Americans' two favorite aspects of the ACA, allowing children to stay on their parents' health insurance for several years longer than they had in pre-ACA days and working out a coverage plan for people with pre-existing condition. The new bill also should use free-market forces to lower coverage prices for users.
As has been frequently pointed out in commentaries on any new health care legislation, coverage for pre-existing conditions turns the actuarial concept of insurance on its head. Before, if you had a pre-existing condition, you were uninsurable. But the ACA was sold to Americans on that very concept, so Americans understandably no longer want to see people booted out of coverage if cancer returns after 20 years or if an early detected heart murmur leads to a weakened heart 40 years later.
Not surprisingly, then, the pre-existing conditions aspect of the recently passed House health care plan has drawn the most criticism, though almost none of the harping was based on reality, including talk show host Jimmy Kimmel's description of how the law would have affected his son who was born with a heart defect.
The numbers themselves bear out the actual place patients with pre-existing conditions had in the ACA. When given an opportunity to enroll in the bill's Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a bridge to the full rollout of the ACA, fewer than 115,000 patients (at its peak in February 2013) signed up, a tiny percentage of those who had health care coverage.
Even so, the House bill - which, again, is likely to be completely changed in the Senate - has several layers of protection for those relatively few soles with pre-existing conditions. The bill 1) mandates - with no exceptions - that insurers sell plans to people with pre-existing conditions. 2) Those with pre-existing conditions who live in a state that does not seek an optional waiver from the bill's (and the ACA's) "community rating" regulation cannot be charged more than other people for a new plan. 3) Anyone who is insured and remains continuously insured cannot be dropped from a plan due to a pre-existing condition, and cannot be charged more if they develop such a condition. And 4), if someone is uninsured and has a pre-existing condition and lives in a state that received a "community rating" waiver, the state is required to provide that person with a "high risk pool" to help pay for higher premiums.
You can imagine that if there are already so many lies and mischaracterizations about just the pre-existing aspect of a health care plan passed in one house of Congress, the untruths and obfuscations that are likely to be generated about other aspects of the plan and the Senate plan to come will be unending.
Put those together with the intentional lies that were told by Democrats and the media about the Affordable Care Act before and after it passed, and it's evident every utterance from those same mouths about any Republican plan should be taken with a grain of salt.
Meanwhile, we don't see a need to endorse or disdain any GOP plan that passes one house and is dead on arrival in the Senate. But we know what we were told by the other side about the ACA and how that turned out.