GOP Health Bill Penalizes Patients Who Let Insurance Lapse
βThe Republican bill would still require insurers to offer coverage to everyone, including people who have pre-existing medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma or even cancer. But it would allow states to opt out of the federal health law’s prohibition against charging sick people more than healthy ones. In those states, if people have a break in coverage of more than 63 days, insurers could charge them any price for approximately a year when the consumers next apply for coverage β effectively putting health insurance out of reach for many sick people, analysts say. After a year, they would be charged a regular rate again. Coming up with a figure for how many people have pre-existing conditions that could put them at risk for facing unaffordable health insurance premiums has been the subject of debate, with estimates ranging from 133 million on the high end to 2 million on the low end.β