WASHINGTON DC - This week marks the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the health reform law. The Affordable Care Act has implemented a Patient's Bill of Rights, a set of consumer protections that have already gone into effect. These protections are helping guard consumers from the worst insurance company abuses, while offering more coverage options to millions of Americans.
To see President Obama calling a college senior, studying to become a physician, who is being helped by the Patients' Bill of Rights, please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/22/health-reform-phone-call-president
Republicans want to eliminate those patient protections, putting insurance companies back in charge of patients' health care. If Republicans win, patients lose. The Republican repeal agenda would:
* Allow insurance companies to drop people's health care when they get sick;
* Ration care by allowing insurance companies to place arbitrary lifetime and annual limits on coverage;
* Give insurance companies the power to deny health care to children with pre-existing conditions;
* Drop young adults under 26 from their parents' plans;
* Empower insurance companies to spend more money on profits, CEO bonuses, and bureaucracy, and less money on medical care;
* Kick sick individuals with medical conditions - who have no other avenue for health care - off of state Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plans;
* Let insurers set limits on what doctors patients can see, even if those doctors are in their insurers' networks.
(Source: House Roll Call vote 14, Senate Roll Call vote 9)
Even more consumer protections would be repealed once the law is fully implemented - such as re-instituting discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
Today, Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander M. Levin (D-MI) and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Stark (D-CA), criticized the Republican agenda:
Ranking Member Levin: "The new health reform law is taking the reins away from the insurance companies and putting them back in the hands of American families. While millions of Americans are now benefitting from the historic consumer protections in the new law, Republicans continue to fight on behalf of insurance companies by pushing for repeal."
Ranking Member Stark: "Health reform empowers patients to make decisions about their health care, taking control away from insurance companies. Republicans in the back pocket of the insurance lobby would eliminate these consumer protections, giving insurance companies the power to ration care and deny life-saving treatment to Americans."
For information on the Patients' Bill of Rights in the health reform law, please visit: https://www.healthreform.gov/newsroom/new_patients_bill_of_rights.html
