Did someone just chuck pre-existing conditions overboard?

[NorthCarolina]

Democrats consider dropping insurance ban on pre-existing conditions
By John Byrne
Monday, January 25th, 2010

Among the casualties of President Barack Obama's healthcare agenda may be those who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions and can't get insurance.

Thought the ban on denying health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions was going the way of the dodo? Not so fast.

An astute blogger (John Aravosis) noted that the new proposals floated by Democrats in the wake of the massive health care bill's collapse is a provision that would bar denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- but only if they were under 19. "Did someone just chuck pre-existing conditions overboard?" he wrote.

Among the measures Democrats are considering, the New York Times noted Friday, "Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions."

"The only reason to specify that children under the age of 19 won't be denied coverage is because you plan on letting everyone 19 and over BE denied coverage for pre-existing conditions," blogger John Aravosis replied.

The liberal blogger also discovered a carefully worded description of what may be Obama's health care fallback plan in an editorial penned for the Washington Post on Sunday by former Obama campaign manager Dan Plouffe.

"If we do pass it, dozens of protections and benefits take effect this year," Plouffe wrote. "Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition. Workers won't have to worry that their coverage will be dropped because they get sick. Seniors will feel relief from prescription costs. Only if the plan becomes law will the American people see that all the scary things Sarah Palin and others have predicted -- such as the so-called death panels -- were baseless."

Aravosis notes that Plouffe has again highlighted plans to jettison pre-existing conditions -- but only for children.

"Their children?" he wrote. "The original promise - even the bad Senate bill - protects everyone, of any age, from being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Now it's just children?"

---snip---

Link to the above article:
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/democrats-dropping-ban-preexisting-conditions/

Link to original post by John Avarosis:
http://www.americablog.com/2010/01/did-someone-just-chuck-pre-existing.html

Link to Washington Post article by David Plouffe:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html

[Mass]

1. Key sentence "take effect this year". The Senate bill has preexisting conditions starting in 2014

except for children under 19. This is what Plouffe sentence is referring to.

[frazzled]

2. Exactly. Correction on "astute blogger" John Aravosis ...

NOT.

God, how the disinformation goes viral so much more quickly than the facts.

[subterranean]

3. The "astute blogger" seems to have missed that distinction.

Or maybe he just chose to ignore it. The ban on pre-existing condition exclusions for children under 19 immediately and everyone else starting in 2014 has been the plan in the Senate bill all along. It's nothing new.