GOP leaders add penalty for lapsed coverage to health bill
WASHINGTON Republican leaders added a penalty for people who’ve let their insurance lapse Monday as party leaders prepared to begin pushing the health care measure through the Senate, despite a rebellion within GOP ranks.
Under the new provision, people who’ve had at least a 63day gap in coverage during the past year and then buy a policy would face a six-month delay before it takes effect. Until now, the measure that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced last week included no language prodding healthy customers to purchase insurance.
The provision is aimed at helping insurance companies and the insurance market by discouraging healthy people from waiting to buy a policy until they get sick. Insurers need healthy customers who are inexpensive to cover to help pay the costs of people with medical conditions that are costly to treat.
The GOP bill would roll back much of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. It pressures people to buy insurance by imposing a tax penalty on those who don’t, but the Republican legislation would repeal that penalty, effectively erasing Obama’s so-called individual mandate.
The House approved its version of the legislation in May. It would require insurers to boost premiums by 30 per cent for those whose coverage lapsed.
McConnell is expected to offer other changes to his proposal as he seeks to nail down support for the package. He can win approval only if he limits Republican no votes to just two of the 52 GOP senators, since Democrats solidly oppose the bill. Debate should begin as early as Tuesday.
Five GOP senators — four conservatives and a moderate — have said they oppose the measure McConnell unveiled last week. Others from both ends of the party’s spectrum have expressed concerns, complicating McConnell’s task because edging the bill in one direction risks alienating GOP lawmakers from the other side.
None of the dissident senators have ruled out supporting the legislation if it is revised.