In an article posted this morning by Olivia Nguyen in D Healthcare Daily, DFW Hospital Council President/CEO W. Stephen Love commented on the potential weaknesses of the American Health Care Act (AHCA).

“When we start cherry-picking essential health benefits like maternity, mental illness, and other coverage by removing them from the total population pool, we generally create hardships for someone in the form of no coverage or higher out-of-pocket costs,” Love said. “We need to be extremely careful as we modify essential health benefits, because we are impacting the treatment of many individuals.”

As the process to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) progresses this week, Americans are waiting to see whether the AHCA proposal will replace the current law requiring insurers to protect consumers with a minimum package of health benefits included in the ACA.

If the essential health benefits are repealed and replaced with policies that do not include a minimum federal benchmark, consumers will experience a return to the previous patchwork system, where a person’s coverage varies widely depending on where they live.

You can read the full story here.