HHS Report on Obamacare’s Preexisting Conditions Impact: Say What???

Edmund Haislmaier / January 19, 2011

On the eve of the scheduled vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on a bill to repeal Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a report yesterday entitled: “At Risk: Pre-Existing Conditions Could Affect 1 in 2 Americans: 129 Million People Could Be Denied Affordable Coverage Without Health Reform.”

The report’s “findings” are misleading and wildly inaccurate.

The report implies that without Obamacare’s prohibition on insurers applying preexisting-condition exclusions, nearly half of the entire U.S. population would be at risk of being denied health insurance because they already have a preexisting medical condition.

But claiming that, because millions of people have preexisting medical conditions today, they risk being denied coverage if Congress repeals Obamacare is like saying that, because millions of Americans live within five miles of the seacoast, they risk being killed by the next hurricane if Congress cuts funding for the Army Corps of Engineers. Such simplistic and superficial methodologies deliberately ignore all the other relevant factors that might lead a reasonable person to question their outlandish conclusions. (more…)