Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to appeal the health care law. What happens now? How is this going to affect health insurance? There has been much discussion, all over the internet, about this topic today.
There are a few things that we know for certain in regards to the repeal. We know that The House of Representatives has, officially, voted to repeal the health care law. We know that before the law can be completely repealed, the Senate must vote to repeal it as well. We know that if the Senate votes to repeal the health care law, then the President of the United States must decide to sign that repeal. At that time, the repeal will be official. On the other hand, we know that if the Senate does not vote to repeal it, or if the President does not sign it, then the repeal will not take effect.
Even so, there are a lot of questions about how the repeal could, potentially, affect health insurance. It has been said that the repeal will cause a lot of people to lose their health insurance. The Affordable Care Act made it illegal for insurance companies to refuse a person because that person had a pre-existing condition. The fear is that these people will soon receive a letter from their health insurance companies that informs them that their policy has been canceled. Those who have pre-existing conditions, but do not yet have health insurance, are going to have great difficulty finding it, once again.
The Affordable Care Act also allowed people to use their health insurance to cover their children, if their children were age 18 through 26. Previous to that change, it was extremely difficult for this age group to find health insurance. Young adults have trouble being able to afford health insurance on their own because they do not make enough money. Those that are able to find work are not employed in jobs that offer health insurance. Will the repeal mean that 18 to 26 year olds will go back to being uninsured?
California is one of the states that recently started working on setting up the health insurance exchanges that were expected to be available by 2014. It is unknown how the repeal is going to affect the exchanges. If the repeal removes the law that will require all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014, this is going to throw a wrench into how the exchanges were supposed to work. It could mean that the affordable health care that many Americans were expecting to soon see made available is no longer a possibility.
Before the Affordable Care Act was made into law, there was much debate regarding abortion. Some had concerns that the Affordable Care Act would be used to fund abortion, which was not what that particular group wanted. Now that the House of Representatives is working on an alternative plan to the Affordable Care Act, the discussion regarding abortion and public health care has started up again.
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