Collateral damage in the GOP war against President Obama:
With a court decision on Monday declaring the health care law unconstitutional and Republicans intent on repealing at least parts of it, thousands of Americans with major illnesses are facing the renewed prospect of losing their health insurance coverage.
The legislation put an end to lifetime limits on coverage for the first time, erasing the financial burdens, including personal bankruptcy, that had affected many ailing Americans.
For example, Hillary St. Pierre, a 28-year-old former registered nurse who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had expected to reach her insurance plan’s $2 million limit this year. Under the new law, the cap was eliminated when the policy she gets through her husband’s employer was renewed this year.
Ms. St. Pierre, who has already come close once before to losing her coverage because she had reached the plan’s maximum, says she does not know what she will do if the cap is reinstated. “I will be forced to stop treatment or to alter my treatment,” Ms. St. Pierre, who lives in Charlestown, N.H., with her husband and son, said in an e-mail. “I will find a way to continue and survive, but who is going to pay?”
Exactly what will happen to the law’s specific provisions that prevent insurers from imposing lifetime limits and require them to phase out the annual limits now in place is unclear.
And every single one of the GOP Presidential candidates is on-board with putting these people through this, apparently:
A judge’s ruling that called President Barack Obama’s landmark health care overhaul unconstitutional renewed criticism from his potential 2012 rivals, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading the unified pack on Tuesday.
They’re a “unified pack” all right.