If Obamacare Is Struck Down, These Americans Are in Trouble

Millions could be hurt if the Supreme Court scraps health care reform. Here are their stories.

—By Adam Serwer

Marla Tipping's 14-year-old son Cam has to have his blood cleaned every two weeks. He has a rare condition that makes his body produce too much cholesterol.

Tipping says her family has had "to be absolutely vigilant in never having a lapse in coverage ... because many carriers would never carry you with a preexisting condition again."

That was the case before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Now, children like Cam cannot be denied coverage because of a preexisting condition. (Similar protections for adults are set to start in 2014.) While Tipping says she and her husband still pay between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars out of pocket every year for costs their insurance won't cover, the ACA at least guarantees that they'll be able to find some kind of policy for Cam, even if they are forced to leave their current plan.


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"There are basically five ways this could come out. None except upholding the law are good," says Donald Berwick, who until December 2011 served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he helped implement early provisions of the Affordable Care Act. "The implications of the law going away are dire for millions of Americans." Given all the provisions already in place, any changes spurred by the court would also be an administrative nightmare. "It would be logistically very, very difficult," Berwick adds.

The high profile parts of the bill, like the mandate, don’t kick in until 2014, but defenders of the law point to several parts that are already active that would be taken away if the Supreme Court struck the entire law down. Aside from banning discrimination against children on the basis of preexisting conditions, the National Center for Health Statistics estimates that about 2.5 million young Americans have benefited from being able to stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26. Seniors no longer have to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket before qualifying for assistance paying for their prescription drugs—help that fills the so-called "doughnut hole." The Affordable Care Act has also eliminated the cap on lifetime benefits, which means people with serious health problems won't find themselves overwhelmed with health care costs because their insurance company no longer wants to help pay the bills.

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http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/obamacare-scotus-victims