Does the AHCA protect people with pre-existing conditions?

In North Carolina there are 1.6 million adults with a pre-existing health condition, including 86,000 who buy health insurance individually through Obamacare.

Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to replace Obamacare with a different law, the American Health Care Act – although it still has to be approved by the Senate before it goes to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature to become law.

In their push to drum up support for the law, GOP lawmakers have said the millions of people nationwide with pre-existing conditions won’t lose the protections that they won for the first time under Obamacare.

“The American Health Care Act absolutely does not eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions,” said North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican who represents the southern areas of the state between Charlotte and Fayetteville.

PolitiFact North Carolina looked into that claim, however, and found Pittenger isn’t exactly telling the truth.

People with pre-existing conditions would absolutely lose some, but not all, of the protections that the current law gives them.

It’s possible that if the AHCA does become law, people with pre-existing conditions – who make up an estimate one-in-four Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 – could wind up paying thousands of dollars more per year for their health insurance.

Since the AHCA would allow for insurance rates to vary greatly from state to state, Pittenger previously said people “can go to the state that they want to live in” to find cheaper health care if the AHCA passes.

For more details on what PoltiFact NC called a “misleading” claim about the coverage protections – and to learn more about the last-minute addition of $8 billion in extra spending into the GOP plan – read the full fact-check here.

This story was originally published May 4, 2017 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Does the AHCA protect people with pre-existing conditions?."