In January 2018, a bill from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.
The Republican-controlled House passed the bill in February, but the Senate rejected it the following month.
In the weeks leading up to the signing, many Americans were frustrated that Obamacare’s protections against pre-existing conditions were not fully enforced, especially in rural areas.
Some complained about a lack of affordable coverage for the young, who often struggle to find affordable insurance, while others expressed concern about the rising costs of the newly created marketplaces, and about a $2,000 annual premium for the coverage they already had.
The bill also included a provision that required insurance companies to provide coverage for any person who has pre-existed a condition for six months, or to cover any patient who had pre-term labor or childbirth, and that it would allow states to waive the requirement for certain low-income people to buy insurance.
On the surface, the bill seemed to be designed to make health insurance more affordable for the average American.
But behind the scenes, the Republican Party was playing with fire and creating a health insurance scam that was designed to destroy coverage for millions of Americans.
As a result, the ACA was dismantled in its entirety and millions of people lost their health coverage.
What went wrong?
What did the House Republicans do wrong?
House Republicans passed a bill that would gut the ACA, repeal millions of protections and gut the individual market.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the repeal of the ACA would increase premiums by $2.7 trillion over the next decade, leading to higher deductibles and co-payments.
But many of the millions of uninsured people that were already facing these hardships were left out of the new marketplaces.
Instead, millions of young adults, the working poor, and those with pre-partum heart conditions were left to fend for themselves.
They were forced to pay more for their health insurance than the rest of their families.
The American Medical Association warned that “the new federal regulations will cause premiums to soar for older and healthier individuals, while leaving young adults and adults with preterm labor and delivery at a huge financial disadvantage.”
This was an intentional move to drive up premiums for young adults.
The CBO estimates that young adults will face a $1,000 deductible for their insurance.
The average deductibles of those with preexisting conditions are $6,000 and $8,000, respectively.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, young adults ages 18-34, and adults ages 35-54, will face an average of $2 in additional health insurance costs annually, compared to those under 35.
The legislation also gave states more leeway to waive pre-payment requirements for people with pre, or pre-eclampsia conditions.
This means that states could charge higher premiums to people with pree xisting conditions than to people without.
The Trumpcare bill also gave the states even more leoverage to waive their preexistent conditions protections, as long as the insurers offered coverage to everyone who had a pre-condition.
According a New York Times analysis, the Trump bill also created a loophole for states that opted to waive preexistence protections for people under 26.
Under this loophole, people aged 26-54 with pre or preexisted conditions would be able to purchase health insurance across state lines, despite the fact that they were already covered under a state’s insurance program.
Many people in these states were unaware that the law required insurers to offer coverage to them.
The ACA also allowed insurers to sell policies in states that did not allow insurance coverage for pre-preexisting condition coverage.
This is a common practice in many states.
In states where insurance is required for preemption, insurers have to cover people with a preexisitence condition, even if the person is not covered under the state’s health insurance program or does not have preexistence conditions.
Insurers can then offer the policy in those states without being required to offer the coverage to people in those same states.
If insurers want to sell coverage in a state that does not mandate preemption for preexistant condition coverage, they can simply choose to sell it to those people without being forced to do so.
In a statement, the White House argued that this loophole allowed insurers with preemption to sell insurance in states where they had a problem with preeXisting Condition protections.
But according to the American Medical Associations, the loophole created a financial burden for insurers.
For example, the association said that the ACA’s preemption provision allowed insurers that did have pre-emption to avoid paying premiums for coverage that would have been available to everyone regardless of preexistance conditions.
The White House added that states that chose to waive coverage protections were able to charge people more for health insurance, even when they had preexists with preexisting conditions.
What was the impact of the AHCA?
A number of Republican senators voted against the bill, and others said