Robert King of the Washington Examiner reports on the latest health care reform effort on Capitol Hill.
Republican senators trying a last stab at tackling Obamacare are pushing a bill that lets states partly waive key regulations that include protections for people with pre-existing conditions, an issue that has doomed other attempts at repealing former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
The bill, co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Dean Heller of Nevada, seeks to provide Obamacare funding to states in the form of $1.2 trillion in block grants from 2021 to 2026.
Critics of the approach quickly said that the bill’s waivers from key Obamacare insurer regulations would erode protections for people with pre-existing conditions. It also would waive essential health benefits such as maternity care or mental health. …
… Key among the waivers is for community rating, a regulation that requires insurers on the individual market to charge everyone the same rate regardless of health history. While the bill doesn’t let states waive the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions, experts say that repealing community rating would make insurance quickly unaffordable for those people.
The bill’s co-sponsors counter that the legislation includes protections for people with pre-existing conditions and that the block grants would spur greater innovation.
