Lest there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that the “new” Senate tax cut bill, also known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act, is a step (in seven-league boots) back into the past, one need only listen to Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price saying that the country’s health care system—should the BCRA succeed in passage—ought to operate the way it did before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

According to a Huffington Post report, Price appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and was asked to respond to severe criticisms of the bill leveled by, of all groups, the insurance industry.

Industry groups America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association of America teamed up to write a letter to Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, calling the proposed plan together with an amendment added by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas “simply unworkable in any form.” The letter also warned that the bill and amendment as written would result in “widespread terminations of coverage” among those suffering from serious medical problems.

Why? It would allow insurers to discriminate between healthy potential customers and those who are ill and need insurance—charging those with preexisting conditions sky-high premiums and making coverage unaffordable for those who truly need it.

Price’s reply was to take a nostalgic look back at the bad old days before insurers had to cover everyone: “It’s really perplexing, especially from the insurance companies,” he’s quoted saying in the report, “because all they have to do is dust off how they did business before Obamacare.”

Price was referring to Cruz’s amendment, which would allow insurers to go back to selling policies that leave out key benefits, such as prescription drugs or mental health treatment—policies referred to in numerous reports as “junk policies.”

“A single risk pool, which is what they’re objecting to, is exactly the kind of process that wasthat has been utilized for decades to care for individuals,” Price added.

The report points out that “In discussing their health care plan, Republicans do not usually speak as candidly as Price about returning the nation’s health care system to its pre-Obamacare period, a period marked by egregious insurance company abuses. Protections for pre-existing conditions remain highly popular around the country, and GOP lawmakers are loath to admit their policies would weaken them.”

In pre-ACA days, it adds, 79 million people went without health insurance or were underinsured.

Instant Insights /

Price defends Cruz health care amendment to insurers

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