For reasons that probably aren't good, the Trump regime waited until late last night to file a legal brief with the Supreme Court to support a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in its entirety.
The Justice Department's legal argument is that the rest of the law must be overturned because the individual mandate was repealed.
The brief includes a section pointedly arguing that the Affordable Care Act's pre-existing condition rules must be overturned as well. Those rules forbid insurers from turning away customers or charging them more on the basis of factors like age, gender and health status. The position contradicts Trump's insistence that he will protect people with pre-existing conditions.
The White House has not offered a replacement proposal if the case succeeds in court.
Trying to kick 20 million or more people off their coverage during a pandemic is heinous, of course, and the economic consequences of doing that would be severe even if everything else in the world were normal, but that's not the most insidious part of this to me.
Trying to repeal protections for pre-existing conditions at a time when Trump and the GOP are directly responsible for giving millions of people a pre-existing condition is evil, for the lack of a better term.
Millions of Americans have already been infected by the coronavirus and millions more will be while Trump tries to ensure that people infected by it will never have coverage again.
That's not a theory. Politico reports that the federal government is refusing to pay for treating complications stemming from COVID-19 even now. These are now their pre-existing conditions.
Patients with and without insurance have already been hit with staggering bills, despite a White House promise to cover their costs, according to patient advocates. That’s because health care providers and insurers are classifying some complications as distinct from the virus during the billing process. The extent of the problem is still not fully known due to the lag time in settling medical claims. [...]
“The death toll, as devastating as it is, is a small part of the whole story, because you don’t know what the disability toll is,” said James DeLemos, chair in cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Health providers eager for payment are lobbying the Trump administration to start paying for uninsured patients’ post-coronavirus care using a hospital bailout fund. Facilities that get paid can’t turn around and try to collect more money from the patients.
But the Health Resources and Services Administration that runs the fund says it will only pay if Covid-19 is the patient’s primary diagnosis. Molly Smith, a vice president at the American Hospital Association, calls the requirement “flawed,” and warns the government won’t pay for a “significant” amount of coronavirus treatment as a result.
This is the number one reason why I personally wear a mask anytime I step outside and haven't been to a bar or restaurant even though they reopened in May.
I'm not afraid of dying as much as I'm afraid of going bankrupt.
No one should have to make that choice, but this is America.