From Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who asked for horror stories about Obamacare and was instead deluged with stories from people who have been helped by it:
The stories are largely around pre-existing conditions and those that are getting health insurance up to age 26.
Well, sure. Everyone likes the idea of making sure that people with pre-existing conditions can get health insurance. Unfortunately, as Greg Sargent points out, Republicans can’t just say they support Obamacare’s pre-existing conditions provision but oppose the rest of it:
It’s true that Republicans tend to support provisions like the protections for preexisting conditions; after all, they are very popular. But they can’t be tidily untangled from the law. The ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions rely on the individual mandate, because without it, people would simply wait until they got sick to sign up for insurance, driving up premiums; instead, the mandate broadens the risk pool. And the mandate requires the subsidies, so that lower-income people who’d face a penalty for remaining uninsured can afford to buy coverage.
This is something that Republicans steadfastly refuse to admit, even though it’s obvious to everyone with even a passing knowledge of how this stuff works. Sargent has more at the link about how this ties into the King v. Burwell lawsuit and Republican claims that they want to replace Obamacare with something better.
