The new “issue” making the rounds is an effort to convince the government to add a special enrollment period for pregnancy so that when women discover they’re pregnant they can then decide to purchase health insurance: It’s idiotic and is UNFAIR to every non-pregnant Obamacare compliant person.
Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller, MUST be confused, right? In an article posted in the NY Daily News, 3/19/2015, "We Can't Wait for Feds to Change Affordable Care Act," http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/wait-feds-change-affordable-care-act-article-1.2154778, he anticipates a better time when PREGNANCY will be considered a qualifying event under Obamacare much like getting married, or a change in job status, remarking that “…incredibly pregnancy is not on this list.” Has he READ the Affordable Care Act?
Under the Affordable Care Act, EVEN CATASTROPHIC plans have pregnancy, maternity and newborn services as ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS that EVERYONE pays for regardless of whether they’re single, married, male, female, old, young. It’s one of every health insurance purchaser’s costs of doing business.
Therefore we’re talking about “special” enrollment for people who are already outside of the law that requires everyone to “have” health insurance and then piggybacking that non-compliance with an extra privilege to be able to get insurance WHENEVER THEY WANT just because they’re pregnant…Incentivizing women to break the individual mandate provision and NOT purchase health insurance until they’re pregnant.
It’s idiotic and if HHS Secretary Burwell bends to it she’ll actually be using the so far unfettered authority of HHS to ENCOURAGE WOMEN NOT TO PURCHASE HEALTH INSURANCE UNTIL THEY’RE PREGNANT.
Under the ACA, women’s health has been given far superior consideration and financial protection than male health from free checkups (not available to men) to free birth control (not available to men) to free domestic violence counseling (not available to men) to free reproductive cancer screenings (not available to men) THAT’s THE FREE STUFF, PREVENTIVE.
Then there’s the stuff that EVERY PLAN MUST COVER (and therefore we all pay for) THAT’S INCLUDED AS AN ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFIT which INCLUDES PREGNANCY, MATERNITY AND NEWBORN CARE, meaning that ANY woman who is pregnant and has health insurance with a qualified plan will have those services, even if it’s the cheapest catastrophic plan.
By promoting a special enrollment period for pregnant women, therefore, advocates are saying women should be given the option of NOT purchasing health insurance CONTRARY to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act’s INDIVIDUAL MANDATE UNTIL they become pregnant in which case WHENEVER they become pregnant they should be able to say, “Yeah, now I’ll buy health insurance.”
It’s ridiculous because it is contrary to the “idea” of the Affordable Care Act that “everyone pays” (individual mandate) and that “everyone gets insurance or pays a penalty” AND that everyone must enroll in order to comply with the ACT unless there is a life event such as a marriage or a job change. NOTE: Once a baby’s born it can be added to a health insurance plan, so that’s not the issue.
I would love to see enrollment periods for health insurance done away with because I think among other things it would encourage true competition among insurers rather than this sign and stuck approach we have today. But short of doing away with enrollment periods, providing pregnant women with their own special enrollment period makes no sense.
New York, which is where this article comes from is a state with expanded Medicaid, which means that more people have access to near-free medical care and near-free medical treatment than in non-expanding states and therefore there is really no excuse to support the addition of yet another benefit for women that will cost everyone else more and that is contrary to the goals of the ACA to get people to purchase health insurance in the first place.
