Page 17 - Risk Pool News Today

Wrong. this bill takes care of people with preexisting conditions, it doesnt take people off of medicaid, what it does it freezes the medicaid expansions but this is a bill thats going to take care of the american people and i believe it will bring down premiums. >> okay, so lets first talk about preexisting conditions. how is it going to take care of preexisting conditions? are you talking about the tax credits that will make up for the increased premiums if you have a preexisting condition? >>...

The second issue being that it creates the conditions for potentially going back to having health insurers charge people who are sycamore money. potentially shutting them out of the system altogether. and finally, the bill eliminates the individual mandate, which is meant as a mechanism under the affordable care act to attract healthy people into the risk pool. and it doesnt really replace it with any other mechanism. so i think to me those are the three fundamental issues that need to get addre...

The latest inventions. do you know what they cost? do you know what cancer treatments cost? $100,000 a year. if everybody is paying the same price to cover that premiums are going to go through the roof. so the new bill, with a waiver, creates an option that you could fund a high risk pool which somebody could go to. if they were in a gap they could go there and pay a higher premium which, by the way, the government could supplement. >> eric: let me bring byron in. i want you to weigh in on the ...

Pre-existing is different than guaranteeing an affordable rate. is the idea that people with pre-existing conditions could be charged higher premiums than other folks, is that a nonstarter for you as you look forward? >> in the patient freedom act, we actually allow -- have community rating, if you will. those of a certain age would all be charged the same amount of money. so we addressed that fact. >> so again -- >> so when you say nonstarter, thats kind of an absolute. for example, maine has a...

You on behalf of my organization, faith and freedom coalition, that had absolutely nothing to do with our support for the legislation. it is good to cut taxes and lift the burden of regulation and taxes on small business, which this does. it is good to lower premiums, and by restoring some of the high-risk pools in many of these states, don, that were done away with by obamacare, we can take those patients who are sick or who are likely to get sick because they have previous conditions, and put ...

Waiver, which if they apply for a waiver, they can -- if somebody lets their insurance lapse for more than 63 days, they could then charge those people a higher premium. you say, look, dont let your insurance lapse for 63 days, right? the problem is that 30 million people last year let their insurance lapse for close to three months because it is expensive because they lost their job, because of a variety of reasons. so a lot of people would suddenly be penalized who would be diverted to this hi...

If you think thats expensive, youre right. the concern has been how much does it really cost. and what they found in the past was that states that have tried really could not afford it and they dismantled these pools because they were very, very difficult to maintain. both for the people administering it and for the patients as well, really expensive, didnt offer as much in terms of health care and again, john, these are people who actually utilize the health care system. these are people who ne...

People who then would be charged too much on the individual market for their health care insurance. they could go to a high risk pool, which is a subsidized pool. the government is helping subsidize their care and thats one of the things theyre leaning on. part of the problem is these have been tried before. theyre really expensive. youre taking the highest risk patients and putting them in one place and as a rule they were generally underfunded and the people part of those pools couldnt afford ...

To create this high risk pool, operating for more than three decades but it isnt cheap for the public or the patients. premiums skyrocketed. what lessons were learned there? >> well, i think we had one of the oldest and largest high risk pools and even with the largest high risk pool we only had 26,000 people enrolled. that enrollment stayed pretty steady over the last ten years. what we have learned is there are high costs. so the costs kept going up, the premiums are relatively high so not eve...

About the tax cut real quick? the criticism from democrats is that republicans only wanted this because they needed it for a tax cut and theyre using thi to get a tax cut? >> well, i dont speak for the republican party, but i can tell you on behalf of my organization, faith and freedom coalition, that had absolutely nothing to do with our support for the legislation. it is good to cut taxes and lift the burden of regulations and taxes on small business, which this does. it is good to lower premi...