Today’s NY Times is running a series of articles profiling families that will benefit from protections in the Affordable Care Act that take effect today. One family has a daughter with a severe form of spinal muscular atrophy and they no longer have to worry about hitting the lifetime benefit cap. The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on benefits, which means that this child and other people with severe disabilities will continue to receive the care they need.
Meanwhile, Republicans are gleefully pitching their plans to repeal the ACA with…something. Of course, they pledge to keep all the popular features of the law (like the ban on benefit caps and the prohibition of discrimination against people with preexisting conditions), but they are determined to repeal the mandate that everyone have insurance. Removal of the mandate will render those protections meaningless because insurers will be denied the healthier customer base that a mandate would provide, forcing the people who need coverage to pay exorbitant premiums. I doubt that Republicans will actually succeed in their plans, but this is just one example of the intellectually and ethically bankrupt thinking that will likely hold sway in the House for the next couple years.
