Report outlines what Affordable Care Act repeal would mean to Iowans

Washington, D.C.-Caucus participants in Iowa may be studying Republican presidential candidates to try to find differences, but a report released today instead reveals what the candidates have in common-they have all endorsed repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and they all support drastic changes to Medicaid and Medicare.

If allowed to be implemented, these changes represent major reversals in national progress toward ensuring that all citizens in this nation have access to affordable health coverage. Their proposals would undo almost 50 years of health coverage progress and would affect all Iowans-old, young, and working age-as health coverage protections are eliminated, and as prescription drugs, preventive care, and coverage itself becomes less affordable.

Iowans should be aware that repeal of the Affordable Care Act would mean:

• Iowa's 519,700 Medicare beneficiaries would no longer be eligible for free preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Nearly three-quarters of these beneficiaries (71.1 percent) have taken advantage of the benefit for at least one free preventive service between January and November 2011.

• The infamous Medicare Part D “doughnut hole”-the huge gap in prescription drug coverage-would grow rather than diminish through rebates and ultimately close. About 46,000 Iowans received a rebate check for prescription drugs in 2010, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In 2011, a similar number received even larger discounts-an average of $581 per person through just October-while in the doughnut hole. The gap in Part D coverage will continue to shrink each year, unless health reform is repealed.

• Insurance companies could again deny health coverage for children with a pre-existing condition, a practice that is now prohibited. More than 51,000 children in Iowa have been diagnosed with a pre-existing condition that could have resulted in denial of coverage in the individual market prior to reform.

• Many young adults would no longer be able to remain on their parents' insurance. In Iowa, 25,700 young adults are now eligible to continue receiving coverage in this manner.

• Women would continue to pay higher premiums than men. In Iowa, every one of the best-selling individual market plans currently charges a 40-year-old, non-smoking woman higher premiums than a 40-year-old, non-smoking man. Gender rating will be made illegal in 2014, unless the Affordable Care Act is repealed.

• Tax cuts to help lower- and middle-income individuals and families pay for health care premiums would be taken away. Under the current law, 261,200 people in Iowa will be eligible for these premium tax cuts in 2014.

The list of bad outcomes from the repeal of health reform goes on: losing the opportunity to purchase coverage like Congress has; the reestablishment of lifetime and annual caps on benefits; the freedom of health insurers to spend benefits on almost anything besides health care; the loss of a standardized right to appeal coverage decisions.

“Returning our health care system to a ‘Wild West' market run by health insurers would take away important new rights and benefits gained by Iowa's families under the Affordable Care Act,” Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said today. “Making cuts to Medicaid and ending Medicare as we know it makes thing for people of Iowa even worse, yanking coverage from Iowa families in economic distress and putting health coverage out of economic reach for many Iowa seniors.

“The Republican candidates never talk about real benefits to Iowa families under Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and they offer nothing positive in the way of replacing the benefits they would take away from hard-working families in Iowa,” Pollack said.

A copy of the Families USA report, “Health Care and the 2012 Iowa Caucuses: What's at Stake?” with an extended discussion of the threats to health care in Iowa, is available at: http://familiesusa2.org/assets/pdfs/Elections-2012/Republican-Primary-in-Iowa.pdf

Families USA is the national organization for health care consumers. It is nonprofit and nonpartisan, and its mission is to secure high-quality, affordable health coverage and care for all Americans.