Political Quotes

“I would concur and say that the reason they have earned the nickname ``junk plans'' is because, frankly, some of them are hardly worth the paper they are written on. First of all, they do not have to comply with some of the very important protections we included as part of the Affordable Care Act-- otherwise known as ObamaCare--especially to protect people who have been ill once before or have been injured once before, people who have a preexisting health condition, maybe a chronic condition that will require medical care throughout their lives. In the old days, which apparently the Republican Senator wants to return to, there were all sorts of abuses, I would argue, that insurance companies could employ in order to limit their exposure, if you will. They had annual limits. They had lifetime limits. They had the capacity to drop somebody from coverage after an illness developed. They had the capacity to say: No, we are not going to offer you insurance. They certainly had the capacity to charge discriminatory premiums based on the preexisting condition. That causes great concern. I just recently saw a report about how much a typical--put it this way: a woman with a breast cancer diagnosis who requires chemotherapy and radiation treatment and medication--how much she would be anticipated to spend out-of-pocket if she had a junk plan at the time that diagnosis was made. It was, on average, $40,000.…”