The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover a number of baseline "essential benefits," including hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, and mental health treatments. But on the brink of the health-care vote in the House, a group of Republicans are aiming to repeal ObamaCare's minimum requirements. As the argument goes, Americans shouldn't have to pay for benefits they aren't using; a 60-year-old-man, for example, shouldn't have to pay for maternity care.
But as The New York Times reports, the lack of a baseline could lead to fraud and a looser interpretation of what "insurance" means. At a certain point, policies could even cover "aromatherapy and not chemotherapy."
The Republicans' plan proposes that Americans who are buying their own insurance receive money from the government. But "if the essential health benefits go away, insurance companies would be allowed to sell health plans that don't cover, say, hospital care. Federal money would help buy these plans," The New York Times writes. Here's more:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Mark Pauly, a professor of health-care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who tends to favor market solutions in health care, said that while the ObamaCare rules are "paternalistic," it would be problematic to offer subsidies without standards. "If they're going to offer a tax credit for people who are buying insurance, well, what is insurance?" he said, noting that you might end up with the government paying for plans that covered aromatherapy but not hospital care. "You have to specify what's included."A proliferation of $1,995 plans that covered mostly aromatherapy could end up costing the federal government a lot more money than the current GOP plan, since far more people would take advantage of tax credits to buy cheap products, even if they weren't very valuable. [The New York Times]
Read more about the potential consequences of losing essential benefits at The New York Times.
-
Quiz of The Week: 16 – 22 AugustQuiz Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
Can Soho House get its edge back?Talking Point The private members' club has lost its exclusive appeal – but a £2 billion buy-out could offer a fresh start
-
The week's best photosIn Pictures A human pyramid, a church on wheels, and more
-
Texas declares end to measles outbreakSpeed Read The vaccine-preventable disease is still spreading in neighboring states, Mexico and Canada
-
RFK Jr. shuts down mRNA vaccine funding at agencySpeed Read The decision canceled or modified 22 projects, primarily for work on vaccines and therapeutics for respiratory viruses
-
Measles cases surge to 33-year highSpeed Read The infection was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 but has seen a resurgence amid vaccine hesitancy
-
Kennedy's vaccine panel signals skepticism, changeSpeed Read RFK Jr.'s new vaccine advisory board intends to make changes to the decades-old US immunization system
-
Kennedy ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory panelspeed read Health Secretary RFK Jr. is a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has criticized the panel of experts
-
RFK Jr. scraps Covid shots for pregnant women, kidsSpeed Read The Health Secretary announced a policy change without informing CDC officials
-
New FDA chiefs limit Covid-19 shots to elderly, sickspeed read The FDA set stricter approval standards for booster shots
-
US overdose deaths plunged 27% last yearspeed read Drug overdose still 'remains the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-44,' said the CDC
