โNo. 1,โ declared Mitt Romney in Wednesdayโs debate, โpre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.โ
Paul Krugman certainly thinks Romney was misleading, if not lying, when he said that in the first presidential debate.
89 million โ or 45 million โ Americans would be left uncovered by health care according to Romneyโs plan, according to Krugman.
Since Romney proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act, heโd do away with tens of millions of Americans who canโt afford health insurance, or who have pre-existing conditions.ย Romneyโs drastic cuts in Medicaid would deny health care to millions more Americans.ย Romney said you could just mosey over to the emergency room โ how does that get people the care they need?
Krugman says Romney ignores that Medicaid also pays for nursing care for older Americans.ย Then he raises the big threat โ all the Americans who live under constant worry of losing their health insurance.
What about the claim made by a Romney adviser after the debate that states could step in to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions? Thatโs nonsense on many levels. For one thing, Mr. Romney wants to eliminate restrictions on interstate insurance sales, depriving states of regulatory power. Furthermore, if all you do is require that insurance companies cover everyone, healthy people will wait until theyโre sick to sign up, leading to sky-high premiums. So you need to couple regulations on insurers with a requirement that everyone have insurance. And, to make that feasible, you have to offer insurance subsidies to lower-income Americans, which have to be paid for at a federal level.
Carole