From State Senator Janet Bewley
Don’t Buy the Snake Oil
Without the other provisions of the ACA, a law requiring insurance plans to
cover pre-existing
conditions, by itself, is almost meaningless.
I
thought the days when shameless con men could get away with peddling snake oil
as a health care tonic were long over. Unfortunately, some of my
Republican colleagues are trying to revive that tradition. Earlier this
week the Senate voted in the middle of the night (well, early morning) on a
bill that pretended to protect people with pre-existing health conditions.
Neither
Assembly Bill 365, as amended by the State Assembly nor the Senate Republicans
substitute amendment would have protected people with pre-existing conditions
if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is overturned. Without the other
provisions of the ACA, a law requiring insurance plans to cover pre-existing
conditions, by itself, is almost meaningless.
Nothing
in the republican’s proposals would prevent insurance companies from imposing
annual or lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits provided under the
plans they sell. Nothing in these proposals would require insurance
companies to cover the medications that people with pre-existing conditions
depend on, or limit the amount they could set for co-pays and
deductibles. The only thing these proposals offer is false hope. I
voted no.
Minutes
before that vote, Democrats presented an amendment that would have provided
genuine protections. Republicans refused to even take it up. And
now they are running around pretending that somehow democrats are responsible
for their failure to pass their hollowed out version of a pre-existing
conditions exclusion. They are as shameless as those old time snake oil
peddlers.
The
protections that people with pre-existing conditions need were in the
Democratic amendment, and every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican
voted it down. They voted against genuine state level protections
for those with pre-exiting conditions. Then they defeated their own
half-hearted measure. But they found the votes to keep the greatest
threat to those with pre-existing conditions, their own ACA lawsuit,
alive.
The
only reason a bill banning pre-existing condition exclusions would be needed at
the state level is if the ACA were overturned by the pending lawsuit that
Wisconsin’s outgoing Attorney General joined. The man who defeated him
ran on a promise to pull the state out of that lawsuit.
Instead
of listening to the voters, the republicans who control the legislature used
their lame duck extraordinary session to overturn the will of the voters and
passed a bill that prevents our new Attorney General from pulling Wisconsin out
of the lawsuit. Taxpayers will be forced to pay for the lawsuit they
voted to end.
So
don’t fall for the hype you might be hearing. Don’t be fooled into buying
what my republican colleagues are trying to sell. They are the ones who
voted to put insurance company profits ahead of health of the people of the
great state of Wisconsin. There’s nothing but false hope in their
half-empty bottle of snake oil called AB 365.