A startling report about the health of Americans has been released today, on the cusp of the wrangle in the House about killing health legislation.
As many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have medical problems that are red flags for health insurers, according to an analysis that marks the government's first attempt to quantify the number of people at risk of being rejected by insurance companies or paying more for coverage.
The secretary of health and human services is scheduled to release the study on Tuesday, hours before the House plans to begin considering a Republican bill that would repeal the new law to overhaul the health-care system. The report is part of the Obama administration's salesmanship to convince the public of the advantages of the law, which contains insurance protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.
That's the kind of statistic which makes health insurance viable only if the "pool" of insured is widened to include everyone in the other half of the population. It is also an indication of the kind of work we need to do -- and Republicans might never agree on -- to clean up our environment and wean people away from the kinds of (corporate-profit-driven) eating and living behaviors that lead to "red flag" health conditions.
The study is laced with reminders about provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - as the health-care law is formally known - that are designed to eliminate insurance problems for such people.
The most significant is scheduled to take effect in 2014, when the law will, for the first time, forbid insurers to charge sick patients more or reject sick applicants. Last year, two smaller changes took effect: a rule that insurers cannot reject sick children, and temporary subsidies until 2014 for a federal high-risk pool and new state ones. In their early months, the pools have not proved popular.
The largest number of people with "red flag" medical conditions are older people -- people within a decade of having access to Medicare. That statistic alone would justify lowering eligibility for Medicare to the mid-50's.
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Get your head straight about health care legislation in a non-partisan discussion is coming up here at 10 ET today. Useful fact-checking included.
