Reply #13: Yes, they already do, but my point is that [View All]

[Lyric]

if the bill doesn't change that, then it doesn't help the people we *thought* it was going to help. Average people with pre-existing conditions, the conditions that tend to bring along medical debt.

Right now my Mom is fully disabled, so she qualifies for Medicaid. But a few years ago she was still working as a grocery store manager--making too much to qualify as "poor", but not even close to enough to be able to afford private insurance, and nobody would sell it to her anyway--she has a history of cancer and heart disease. Obviously her medical debt left her with terrible credit.

For a person like my Mom was, a working person with pre-existing conditions and bad credit, what would her choices be? There's no longer a public option to fall back on. If every single insurance company out there rejects her as a customer based on her credit score, what does she do? How can she fulfill the mandate, or get the healthcare she needs so badly?

How can we mandate that people buy insurance without also mandating that insurance companies cannot reject them as customers based on things like credit scores? If we try to force people to buy something that nobody is willing to *sell* to them, that's a serious problem. And it will be the people with pre-existing conditions who get hit by this the worst, people who have medical debt that keeps their credit score imperfect. People with pre-existing conditions are THE people that the supporters of this bill keep waving around like a flag to justify their support. "It's still an improvement! It still helps thousands and thousands of people with pre-existing conditions! That makes it worthwhile!"

What *I* am worried about is that, unless the bill forbids rejecting people based on credit score, it DOESN'T help most of those people. They still won't be able to buy insurance, because nobody will sell it to them. And when you toss in the mandate...my god. There's no longer a public option for people like that to fall back on. They'll be stuck in health insurance limbo, *possibly* liable for a tax penalty, and they'll be in EXACTLY the same practical circumstances that they were before. The only difference will be the excuse for the rejection.

Someone in Congress needs to address this issue and soon, because there's not much point in crowing about helping people with pre-existing conditions if the bill DOESN'T actually help those people get insurance coverage.