That was what Speaker Pelosi said on March 10, 2010.
One day after the Senate’s mammoth, 2,700-page health bill became law, the Associated Press has discovered the legislation doesn’t deliver on a key promise.
Despite repeated assurances that the measure would provide immediate health coverage for children with pre-existing medical conditions, it doesn’t.
Just two days before the crucial House vote, at his nationally televised pep rally for the bill, President Obama promised: “Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.”
Meeting with House Democrats the next day, he forcefully reiterated the claim:
This year … parents who are worried about getting coverage for their children with pre-existing conditions now are assured that insurance companies have to give them coverage — this year.
You’ll recall that, on March 10, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced:
We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.
It seems even the president had to wait until after passage to find out what was really in the bill. Turns out, some kids with pre-existing conditions will have to wait, too. Another four years. The iron-clad guarantee of coverage won’t kick in until then.
Notes the Associated Press: “Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee…. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.”
For more on the false promises and flawed premises of Obamacare, please visit FixHealthCarePolicy.com.