Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is $1 million
Here are the first three paragraphs of an Associated Press article from earlier today:
New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur has experienced personal tragedy and understands the need for health insurance.
"I lost my mother at 4 years old. My father had no insurance and I watched him until I was in college pay off medical bills," says the two-term Republican lawmaker.
Years later, MacArthur suffered the anguish over the death of his 11-year-old daughter, Gracie. "We had over $1 million of medical bills. I had insurance, but I still had a lot of uncovered expenses, and it's brutal," he says.
Ironically, MacArthur has just proposed an amendment to the already outrageous American Health Care Act which would allow states to eliminate Affordable Care Act essential benefits and preexisting illness requirements as long as the state says that premiums will come down and it establishes a high risk pool for those who are denied insurance.
This has been tried before – the high risk pools are always underfunded, and the premiums are so high that only those with the highest costs enroll. So health insurance premiums come down for the healthy – and health insurance is unavailable practically for the sick.
The real story is that MacArthur has learned nothing from his family’s tragedies.
Sarah Kliff just published a profile of a single mom with three children who lost her home and savings due to medical bills before ObamaCare – and who lives in a county in Tennessee that has no insurers committed to exchange plans in 2018. She’s weaning herself off health care, and telling her children what to do if she suddenly dies.
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