There is no lack of joy in Mudville surrounding Thursday's decision to save the PPACA.
Everyone knows that the provision of the PPACA that allows adult kids to be able to stay on their parents' insurance will continue. And 13,000,000 people are going to take notice as they soon get rebates from their insurance companies because of the PPACA'S spending regulations. But for the most part lost admidst the hoopla are some of the biggest winners of this 5-4 sqeaker: seventy thousand people who have a pre-existing condition and who are now getting health insurance and treatment.
These people are beneficiaries of one of the PPACA's best (or worst...) kept secrets -- the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, or PCIP. They will now continue to receive benefits until 2014 -- instead of being left high and dry sick or dead as Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Kennedy would have preferred.
Projected to benefit over 300,000 US residents after a year of operation, the PCIP program is now only serving 70,000 after almost two years. As such, it is has plenty of space for you (if you need it and qualify), or your relative, or your neighbor, or your acquantaince, or even a stranger you happen to strike up a conversation with. As I detailed several months ago I might have saved a life by telling someone about the program. You might be able to as well.
But many of us here know almost nothing about the program, and some might not even that it exists at all. As Kossack Boris49 put it a year ago
Ask a few people what ((the PPACA)) means to them and their families, they don't know much more than 26 year olds are covered under their parents plan and pre-existing conditions cannot be excluded by insurers... they (and I) have no clue.
Hopefully I'm about to change that (so if you're still with me, jump the squiggle!).
If you learn a couple simple facts about the PCIP -- or even just keep in mind that it exists -- you may be able to point someone towards getting life-saving or life-changing treatments. As of August 1st, 2012, someone you know might be able to start getting desperately needed medical care. Not for free, and that's unfortunate; but potentially for bazillions less that it would have cost them to purchase such treatment without this insurance, making help a possibility instead of an impossibility.
Here's the straight dope:
The next time someone tells you about how they or someone they know is unable to get health insurance, don't JUST start ranting about the absurdity of America's health care system. After you're done saying how single-payer is better (it is), how Obama might have sold us out to Big Pharma and the insurance companies (let's not debate that here), and how Republicans think the best health care solution is for sick people to "die quickly" (assuming they think at all), ask a couple questions. Pry a bit. You might find out that the person in question could, within the month, start getting costly treatments that they could not possibly otherwise afford -- paid for by the PCIP. You might even save the person's life.
Start here. Start here. Start here.
That's it! That's all you need to know.
Thank you for listening.
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Costs: They vary a lot by state, but as an example, a 50-year old in the Bay Area would pay $428/month, which is less than I'm paying in the same geographical location.
Note: This is a revision of a diary published back in November, 2011. Now that we have good reason to believe the PCIP program will be around until superceded in 2014 by the ban on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions -- unless alternate-world President Romney and his wet-dream Republican House and Senate use reconciliation to repeal the whole thing in January -- it seemed appropriate to put the facts out there again for all new Kossacks and those that missed it the first time.