Jim Renacci didn’t tell CNN that the latest version of the American Health Care Act would protect “beautifully” those people with preexisting conditions. That was President Trump on CBS over the weekend. The U.S. House member and Wadsworth Republican did prove as misguided in insisting that preexisting conditions “will be covered” under the proposal.
On Tuesday morning, Renacci talked about his support for the bill the Trump White House and the House Republican leadership have been pushing hard. The main obstacle to assembling a majority has been a provision weakening protection for preexisting conditions. It allows states to seek a waiver opting out of the rule under the Affordable Care Act that bars insurers from charging the sick more than the healthy for coverage.
The result would be that those with preexisting conditions may have access to insurance, but the coverage almost surely would be unaffordable. They would not have the assurance they currently do.
The interviewer asked Renacci at least four times how he could be so certain that under the House plan preexisting conditions would be protected. He ducked, dodged and deflected, first arguing the “real issue” is providing flexibility to the states. Moments later, he added that the “real answer” is how to make health care more affordable.
Finally, Renacci explained that as governor (the office he currently is seeking), he would make sure the protections “were maintained,” adding, curiously, “and left in there at some point.” After tossing in the claim about the Affordable Care Act “collapsing,” which the Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts have shown is not the case, he asserted that no governor would end the protection.
Why then provide the flexibility, or eliminate the guarantee?
The performance was Trumpian in its unwillingness to confront reality. Renacci charged that the Affordable Care Act suffers from a “one size fits all” concept. The critique misses the mark in view of the markets available to individual buyers. One way in which the idea does apply involves “community rating,” or a first principle of health insurance, all paying similar premium rates out of an understanding that everyone will need health care to one degree or another.
That is crucial to making health care more widely affordable.
Of late, Renacci and his House Republican colleagues have been scrambling to devise an attractive enough alternative. They added $15 billion last month to bolster high-risk pools for those with preexisting conditions. They are looking at providing another $8 billion. Yet experts caution those sums likely are not adequate, experience teaching that high-risk pools fall far short because they are so costly.
Give Jim Renacci credit. He is out front in the debate. The others seeking the Republican nomination for governor, Mary Taylor, Mike DeWine and Jon Husted, have kept their distance. What the CNN interview reinforced is that Renacci and other House Republicans would put protection for preexisting conditions at risk, or step back toward a more dysfunctional health care market that left so many without adequate health coverage.