Just two Pinocchios for House Republicans who claim they've protected people with preexisting conditions

I'm going to go contrarian here and suggest that House Republicans who claim that they voted to "protect people with preexisting conditions" when they voted for the House ACA repeal bill, the American Health Care Act, are not flat-out lying. They get, say,  two Pinocchios. By current Republican standards, they've got the gaslight turned low. And the furiously passionate battle over whether they're lying obscures the core damage they attempted to wreak on healthcare access in the U.S. -- and will wreak if they maintain control of Congress.

As originally drafted, the AHCA maintained the ACA's essential health benefits, guaranteed issue and modified community rating (base premiums varying only according to age and geographic location). The AHCA would also have

• Rolled back federal funding for the ACA Medicaid expansion, reducing Medicaid enrollment nationally by 14 million according to CBO estimate.


• Imposed "per capita caps" on federal Medicaid spending, likely generating perpetual reductions in federal Medicaid spending that would reach the trillions by the second decade, eroding programs that currently serve 75 million people.

Re-litigating the ACA repeal bills of 2017: Pre-existing conditions and beyond

In House and Senate races across the country, Republicans are being held to account for their support of last year's ACA repeal bills, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which passed the House on May 4, and to a lesser extent, the parallel Better Care Reconciliation Act, which died in the Senate.

The fight often focuses on whether supporters voted to undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The original AHCA, which never came to a vote because it lacked the votes to pass, maintained the ACA's guaranteed issue, modified community rating and Essential Health Benefits (EHBs). It passed only when Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-NJ3, introduced an amendment that won hard-right support by enabling states to open the door to medical underwriting -- and rewrite the EHBs.

MacArthur and allies argue that the door was only cracked a bit, and that those with pre-existing conditions were protected. Only those who had last been insured in the individual market and who failed to maintain continuous coverage could be subject to medical underwriting -- and the state had to establish a high risk pool or reinsurance program for those so exposed, tapping an $8 billion pool established by the bill.

This defense has been widely debunked, most recently by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler today. I'll get to that argument in a moment, as I have something to add. First, I want to reiterate that the whole argument is something of a diversion --- and, because Republicans have a superficially credible defense here, the argument serves their purposes.  Oddly, though, it arguably serves Democrats' purposes too, because a) they can win it, and b) the repeal bills' even more egregious outrages are difficult for Dems to spotlight.

The pre-existing condition smokescreen

In a snappy summary by Axios's David Nather of  the latest AHCA stall-out, this caught my eye:

The holdouts are mainly worried about weakening coverage for sick people. Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania: "Protections for those with pre-existing conditions without contingency and affordable access to coverage for every American remain my priorities for advancing healthcare reform, and this bill does not satisfy those benchmarks for me."

What this tells me is that the moderates will ultimately go along with ending the ACA Medicaid expansion and girdling all federal Medicaid spending with per capita caps.  I have long worried that Republican relative moderates will go squish on Medicaid if AHCA damage to the individual market is moderated past a certain threshold.

Now more than ever, the bottom line remains what Andy Slavitt said it was two months ago: