post by Paul Kelleher
To me, one of the great ironies of the health reform debate was that I never--not once--saw a proponent of the ACA point out that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 was supported by all but one Republican in Congress (Ron Paul). Advocates of the ACA could have pointed to GINA and asked why the GOP overwhelmingly supported making it illegal to charge individuals more because of their genetic predispositions, and yet denounced as socialism a bill that made it illegal to charge more to individuals with actual pre-existing medical conditions.
I suppose one answer might be that GINA did not include an individual mandate, and that supporters of ACA were worried that Republicans would call for a health reform bill structurally similar to GINA. This would have meant a fate for ACA similar to the high-risk pools and the CLASS act, for familiar adverse-selection-related reasons. But this explanation seems too far-fetched: it just can't be true (can it?) that ACA supporters did not draw attention to a good political argument for ACA because it might have meant some Republicans would get behind at least some version of health reform. So I am still left wondering why GINA never seemed to be part of the ACA conversation.
What am I missing?
Comments