Covering Pre-existing Conditions Isn’t Enough

Via The New York Times 

Source: Pexels

By: Dr. Douglas Jacobs

When patients enroll in health insurance, they are often met with a stark reality: Even with insurance, they can’t afford their treatment. With the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions in limbo once again, it’s important to remember that those with such conditions need more than health insurance. They also need to be protected from discriminatory pricing so that they can afford the medications they need.

In 2015 I published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine that detailed how some insurers were raising costs for H.I.V. medicines to dissuade H.I.V.-positive people from selecting their plans. Insurers frequently raise the price of certain medicines to encourage people to select cheaper alternatives, but these insurers raised the cost of every single H.I.V. medicine — leaving many enrollees with no affordable options.

The difference for someone with a pre-existing condition like H.I.V. was staggering (in some cases more than $10,000 annually for H.I.V. medicines in one plan compared with less than $1,000 in another). This practice was later recognized by the Department of Health and Human Services as a form of discrimination by insurers.

Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies and insurers are still getting away with raising their prices in a way that has a disparate impact on those with pre-existing conditions. A 2019 report by Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation found that some insurers continue to price all recommended H.I.V. regimens in a way that makes them prohibitively expensive. In Georgia, for example, three out of the four insurers place all recommended H.I.V. regimens on the most expensive tiers (costing more than $1,000 a month) or do not cover them at all.

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