How many times have we heard, over the last three and a half years, that one of the primary and most popular features of Obamacare is that no one could be denied coverage for a preexisting condition?
The Affordable Care Act does indeed specify, in Section 1201, that “a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage may not impose any preexisting condition exclusion with respect to such plan or coverage.” In other words, a health plan cannot deny enrollment, or the plan’s benefits, to someone based on that person’s preexisting condition.
However, that is not the same as saying that a plan has to enable a patient to continue the same course of treatment that they started before obtaining coverage in an exchange plan on January 1, 2014.
Key to understanding this distinction is that having “health coverage” is not the same as actually obtaining “health care.” The insurance plan has to take anyone who wants to enroll, regardless of their health status or health history – but they don’t have to provide the same treatments, the same doctors, or the same medications that a patient has been receiving.
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