Senate Health Bill Would Wreck the Individual Insurance Market

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This is tentative, but….

I’ve just taken a quick look at the Senate health care bill. Neither preexisting nor continuous are anywhere in the bill. None of the section titles deal with preexisting conditions. It doesn’t appear that the Senate bill affects Obamacare’s protections for preexisting conditions at all. This is almost certainly because the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it had nothing to do with spending or outlays, and therefore couldn’t be included in a reconciliation bill.

The Senate bill also abolishes Obamacare’s individual mandate penalties. The net result is that if this bill passes, people will be free to go without insurance while they’re healthy, and then buy insurance if and when they get seriously ill. This is a disaster for the health insurance industry.

I don’t see how insurance companies can continue to dither at this point. The Senate bill would almost certainly be a huge financial blow to anyone who stays in the individual insurance business, and since the wording is driven by reconciliation rules it means that any final bill negotiated with the House would have to be the same. They can’t possibly accept this, can they?