From the Palatine Tea Party…
(Palatine, Illinois) – In response to the letter Melissa Bean wrote to the constituents in district 8 dated April 16, 2010. We will respond to each of her statements Melissa Bean made based on emotion with factual responses where she stated the following:
“A man unable to start his own company because his pre-existing condition makes it IMPOSSIBLE to afford health insurance in the individual market. Moms and dads who have been laid off from work, dreading the expiration of COBRA benefits and access to health insurance for their families.”
We ALREADY have STATE RUN High Risk Health Insurance pools in 35 States. 10 States have Guaranteed Individual Health Insurance mandates and the ability to purchase Group Health Insurance is available in all 50 States. These State run High Risk Health Insurance pools provide protection to those with pre-existing conditions. In fact, in our State of Illinois, the risk pool is called ICHIP (Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan). If you visit www.chip.state.il.us you will find an easy to use premium calculator. On that page, you will find that a 40 year old man can obtain guaranteed issue health insurance coverage REGARDLESS of his pre-existing conditions for as little as $235 a month and 50 year old man can do so for $386 a month. This is HARDLY “impossible to afford.” In fact, these prices are MUCH cheaper than what it will cost in 2014 and beyond once we started subsidizing insurance premiums for 33 Million more Americans. How do we know this? Just look at Massachusetts where a typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average. Hospital costs are 55 percent above the national average and more than half of the 408,000 newly insured residents pay NOTHING. Another 140,000 remained UNINSURED in 2008 and were either assessed a penalty or exempted from the individual mandate because the state deemed they couldn’t afford the premiums. Shades of things to come!
Furthermore, NO ONE in the State of Illinois has to “dread the expiration of COBRA benefits and access to health insurance for their families.” EVERY family in Illinois and EVERY citizen in Illinois can ALREADY continue their health insurance coverage by enrolling in the aforementioned ICHIP High Risk Health Insurance Pool. In fact, ICHIP’s HIPAA PLAN 5 guarantees those who are coming off of an exhausted Cobra plan IMMEDIATE coverage for their pre-existing conditions. To state anything else is simply untrue.