Jones says Alabama will be harshly impacted if health care act repealed

April 05-- Apr. 5--The future of the Affordable Care Act is in jeopardy after a federal judge in Texas ruled it unconstitutional, which could cause more than 160,000 Alabamians to lose coverage and affect another 940,000 with pre-existing conditions.

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, addressed the challenges to the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare," during a Thursday call with Alabama press members.

"This really concerns me with the (Trump) Administration urging the Department of Justice to get rid of it and this court case in Texas," Jones said. "There are a lot of people in Congress, Republicans and Democrats, who think this Texas case should go away."

The federal judge's ruling has been appealed. Jones said he hopes, along with many other members of Congress, to take the national health care plan and improve so that it benefits more people who otherwise could not obtain coverage.

"There is a lot of appetite to do something for health coverage, but I'm very worried about the lawsuit and impact it could have on Alabamians," Jones said.

The more than 942,000 Alabamians who have a pre-existing condition could be denied coverage or charged more for health care, Jones said.

He said that number represents one-third of people under the age of 65 in Alabama.

Insurers could reinstate annual and lifetime limits on coverage, and women could again be charged more than men for the same care. Young adults would no longer be able to stay on their parents' health care plans until the age of 26, which would cause the approximately 35,000 young adults in the state who gained coverage under this provision to lose their health insurance.

"It's already a challenge for many Alabamians to access the health care they need, particularly in our rural communities. Instead of making that even more difficult, we need to be focusing on making some much-needed improvements to our current system, like lowering the cost of prescription drugs, combating the opioid epidemic, increasing access to rural health care and finally expanding Medicaid in the state of Alabama. The Administration is playing politics with health care and we have to stand up to protect folks from losing their coverage and the vital protections that the federal health law guarantees," Jones said.

Earlier this year, Senator Jones introduced legislation to incentivize Alabama to expand Medicaid by offering states the same deal from the federal government to expand Medicaid that was originally offered in 2010. He also recently re-introduced a bill that would quantify the impact of Medicaid expansion for the states that expanded and those that did not. Medicaid expansion was a key provision of the 2010 health reform law and is vital in the effort to sustain rural hospitals. Since 2011, thirteen hospitals have closed in Alabama, seven of which were in rural areas, according to information from Jones' office.

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