What are your preexisting conditions?
For the last few months I've had some new stomach problems? I've had trouble swallowing some foods. It burns going down and also coming back up. YUCK!
It's led to three appointments with my primary physician, two with my Gastroenterologist, an endoscopy and three new daily pills.
All that for ACID REFLUX!
And yet everything was covered by my insurance. There wasn't a fight with them about any of these things. Not even a minor argument. I wonder how this would go down under the new insurance bill that was just approved by the House of Representative? I have no idea. I doubt anyone does, including the people who wrote the bill. What's in this bill hasn't exactly been transparent.
When we think of preexisting conditions, we immediately think of the biggies. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, the neurological ones. Those are easy. We've already heard that there may be some very controversial provisions to this. If you've been raped, you now have a preexisting condition. Been pregnant...preexisting condition. What if you've been to a therapist, have a drug or alcohol addiction or like my earlier example something like acid reflux?
Are these going to be preexisting conditions and who is going to determine what is and what isn't. Let me take a guess....our insurance companies. Doesn't that make you feel a lot better about our new health care bill!
Let's face it, insurance companies are in business not to make our lives better, but to make money. Lots of money! And by denying claims plus putting people in higher risk pools, you can hear the cash registers ring. CHA-CHING!! Not to mention that any change in policy leads to higher rates. We saw that with Obamacare and even though there are promises of lower premiums/deductibles with Trump-RyanCare, you know the insurance companies are frothing at the mouth thinking of the ways this will benefit them.
While most people I know have become despondent over what happened earlier, we really don't know what's going to be the end result. Word on the streets of DC is this would never get through the Senate. Of course, they said this about the House as recently as two weeks ago and look what happened. My guess is the Senate will make some changes after it gets a CBO score. It'll go back and forth between the House and the Senate as they compromise and eventually we'll get a bill that will go to the President. Who knows how long that process will take. Maybe it'll be more compassionate than what we've seen and heard the last few days but I'm not very optimistic.
In the meantime, I'm not feeling too well right now. I've got a little headache and a runny nose. Oh man, I think I'm coming down with a cold. I better take care of this now. I have no idea how much it will cost in the future.
This is a past piece about how Obamacare saved my life. I'm not the only one with a story like this.
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