Nevada: State House approves ACA #BlueLegProtections; on to the Governor for signing

About three weeks ago I noted that the Nevada state Senate had passed a bill which locks in many of the ACA's patient protections at the state level, just in case the idiotic #TexasFoldEm lawsuit prevails and the ACA is repealed after all.

Yesterday, the Nevada state House followed through as well:

Nevada stands to become the fifth state to fully incorporate the federal Affordable Care Act’s protections for patients with pre-existing conditions into state law after unanimous passage of a bill Tuesday in the state Senate.

"Fully incorporate" isn't quite accurate; as I noted with the Senate version, it looks like the three most important ones are covered (Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating and the ACA's 10 Essential Health Benefits), along with a pre-ACA law letting young adults stay on their parents plan until age 24 (but only if they're unmarried and enrolled in school).

Some of the other ACA provisions (60% minimum Actuarial Value, removal of Annual/Lifetime coverage caps, a cap on maximum out of pocket expenses and the ACA's free preventative services) weren't in the Senate version...and a quick search of the House version doesn't bring up any references to "Actuarial Value" or "Lifetime", so I'm assuming they didn't make the cut there either. On the other hand, there's this, although I'm not sure what it actually means:

Assembly Bill 170, which also sets up a procedure to help health care consumers navigate and resolve problems with insurers, was rewritten to incorporate safeguards that were originally the basis of a different Senate bill that passed earlier.

Anyway, this is still a Good Thing®, although there does remain the issue of how individual states plan on making ACA-compliant policies affordable to lower- and moderate-income people without the accompanying premium & deductible subsidies which make up the Green Leg of the ACA's 3-Legged Stool.

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