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Paul Ryan Makes The Simplistic Case For Obamacare Repeal: You’ll Be Free
Maybe he means the freedom to go bankrupt and ration your own health care.
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On Tuesday, Ryan tweeted an argument that he and other conservative leaders have made many times before: “Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need. Obamacare is Washington telling you what to buy regardless of your needs.”
There’s some truth in that second sentence. The Affordable Care Act forces insurers to sell to people with pre-existing conditions. Plans must cover “essential” services including mental health treatments, maternity care and rehabilitation. Additional provisions cap consumers’ out-of-pocket spending and prohibit insurers from selling plans with annual or lifetime limits on payments.
And, of course, there is the individual mandate. People who decline to obtain coverage must pay a financial penalty, unless they can show that the premiums would be unaffordable.
But do these requirements really mean less freedom overall, as Ryan argues? For many Americans, these requirements and the law as a whole have led to more freedom, sometimes in dramatic ways.
One key reason for government regulation of insurance is that the product is inherently complex, making it hard for most consumers to understand in advance what a given policy will actually cover. In the old days, people could find themselves owing huge bills for hospitalization, rehab or prescriptions because they only discovered after they got sick that their junk or “mini-med” plans left out whole swaths of services or covered just a few thousand dollars worth of charges.
These folks were also easy marks for scams, as state insurance regulators fought a losing battle to keep shady carriers from preying on people without access to decent coverage.
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