{"id":370419,"date":"2018-07-22T15:08:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T14:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/states-attacking-aca-would-suffer-most-if-preexisting-conditions-shield-gets-axe\/"},"modified":"2018-07-22T15:08:04","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T14:08:04","slug":"states-attacking-aca-would-suffer-most-if-preexisting-conditions-shield-gets-axe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/states-attacking-aca-would-suffer-most-if-preexisting-conditions-shield-gets-axe\/","title":{"rendered":"States Attacking ACA Would Suffer Most if Preexisting Conditions Shield Gets Axe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>If the Affordable Care Act\u2019s protections for people with preexisting medical conditions are struck down in court, residents of the Republican-led states that are challenging the law have the most to lose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese states have been opposed to the ACA from the beginning,\u201d said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. \u201cThey\u2019re hurting their most vulnerable citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twenty Republican state attorneys general and governors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasattorneygeneral.gov\/files\/epress\/Texas_Wisconsin_et_al_v._U.S._et_al_-_ACA_Complaint_(02-26-18).pdf\">challenged the constitutionality of the ACA<\/a> in federal court in February. Last month, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice made the unusual decision <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/file\/1069806\/download\">not to defend key portions of the law against this legal challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/khn.org\/news\/administration-challenges-acas-preexisting-conditions-protection-in-court\/\">The states\u2019 lawsuit argues<\/a> that because Congress eliminated the Obamacare tax penalty for not having insurance coverage, effective next year, the entire law is unconstitutional. By extension, the suit calls on federal courts to find the health law\u2019s protections for people with preexisting conditions unconstitutional \u2014 and Sessions agrees.<\/p>\n<p>Nine of the 11 states with the highest rates of preexisting conditions among adults under 65 have signed onto the lawsuit to strike down the ACA, according to data from insurance companies and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/health-reform\/issue-brief\/pre-existing-conditions-and-medical-underwriting-in-the-individual-insurance-market-prior-to-the-aca\/\">The 2015 data<\/a>, the most recent available, were analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)<\/p>\n<p>Those who support the lawsuit contend that there are other means of protecting people with preexisting conditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf a court strikes down the constitutionality of the ACA, there are ways to repeal and replace without Arizonans with preexisting conditions losing their coverage,\u201d said Katie Conner, a spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.<\/p>\n<p>Conner said her boss, who is party to the lawsuit, believes preexisting conditions should \u201calways be covered.\u201d In Arizona,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/states-attacking-aca-would-suffer-most-if-preexisting-conditions-shield-gets-axe\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If the Affordable Care Act\u2019s protections for people with preexisting medical conditions are struck down in court, residents of the Republican-led states that are challenging the law have the most to lose. \u201cThese states have been opposed to the ACA from the beginning,\u201d said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-370419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}