HHS Sec. Sebelius: GOP Effort to Repeal Health Care 'An Opportunity'

Photo Courtesy - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services(WASHINGTON) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday she welcomes the House effort to repeal health care reforms as “an opportunity.”

“The debate in some ways in the House gives us a chance to … remind people what it is that’s at stake,” Sebelius said. “Why we can’t go back to where we were.”

Toward that end, HHS on Tuesday released a new administration analysis that estimates the law will, when it fully kicks in three years from now, prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to between 50 and 129 million non-elderly Americans who have some type of pre-existing health condition.

The Sebelius call featured a handful of people like Dawn Josephson, a mother who hosted President Obama in her backyard on September 22, 2010 for a health care reform discussion. Josephson says her son, who has a preexisting condition, has obtained coverage because of the Affordable Care Act.

“If this got overturned I mean it would put our family right back to where we were last summer, where we’d be wondering, ‘OK, what can we possibly do to scale back benefits. Because if we have to pay everything out of pocket again then we cannot have any kind of comprehensive health insurance.”

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