Wash Post: On health care, Cassidy flunks his own ‘Jimmy Kimmel test’
Remember the “Jimmy Kimmel test” that Senator Bill Cassidy himself created? The one about ensuring a child with a pre-existing condition would be able to afford health coverage? His own bill fails that very test. From Jennifer Rubin with the Washington Post:
“Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who had delivered an impassioned speech on health care after his own son was born with a heart defect, he would only support a bill that would make sure that a child like Kimmel’s would not lack health coverage. Cassidy later articulated his ‘Jimmy Kimmel test’: ‘Would the child born with a congenital heart disease be able to get everything she or he would need in that first year of life … even if they go over a certain amount?’”
“Lo and behold, in the final days of the fiscal year (ending Sept. 30), Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) are pushing a health-care bill that doesn’t remotely pass that test.”
“In essence, Cassidy-Graham turns health care over to the states almost entirely, with few restrictions on how states reconstitute their own system. Some might even decide on a single-payer system (are conservatives paying attention?). Others could make radical changes if they accepted any federal money, including eliminating coverage for kids like Kimmel’s or pricing ordinary people out of the market:”
[From CBPP]: “While insurers would still be required to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, they could offer them plans with unaffordable premiums of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month.For consumers, an offer like that is no different than a coverage denial…. Before the ACA introduced the requirement that all plans cover a defined set of basic services, 75 percent of individual market plans excluded maternity coverage, 45 percent excluded substance use treatment, and 38 percent excluded mental health care, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Under the Cassidy-Graham proposal, states could let insurers restore these exclusions, leaving many people — especially those with pre-existing conditions — without access to the health services they need.”
“In short, Cassidy-Graham is worse than the so-called repeal that failed with three GOP defections (Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska). If they didn’t like draconian cuts to Medicaid, they’ll like this less. If they didn’t like a bill jammed through at the last moment on a straight party vote, they shouldn’t like this one.”
“Most important, the bill doesn’t do what Cassidy himself pledged. A middle- or working-class family in Kimmel’s spot, depending on where he or she lived, could find that their policy eliminated birth defects from coverage or charged an astronomical amount to cover a baby born with a life-threatening ailment. It would do that parent no good to point to his state’s boilerplate claim to the feds that it was providing adequate and affordable coverage. Perhaps Cassidy figures no one will figure out the bait-and-switch until it’s too late. I suspect someone with a gigantic nighttime audience won’t be fooled. He might even tell people Cassidy misled him and his audience.”