WASHINGTON - Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she'd be dead if it weren't for President Obama's health-care law.
Now the Florida small-business woman is worried the Supreme Court will strike down her lifeline. Under the law, Watson and nearly 62,000 other "uninsurable" patients are getting coverage through a little-known program for people who have been turned away by insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions.
"Without it, I would have been dead on March 2," Watson said of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, known as PCIP. That's when she was hospitalized for a life-threatening respiratory infection.
It's not clear how the Supreme Court will rule on the law, but Watson's case illustrates the potential impact of tying everything in the far-reaching legislation to the fate of one provision, the unprecedented requirement that most Americans carry health insurance.
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The law's opponents say if that insurance mandate is found to be unconstitutional, the rest of the law should also go, since courts should not be picking and choosing policy. The administration defends the insurance requirement but says if the court decides to overturn it, most of the rest of the law should stay.
State officials who administer the federal pre-existing condition plan in 27 states - including Arizona - are trying to make fallback arrangements in case the law is invalidated and coverage suddenly terminates.
The White House line is that Obama is confident the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, and his administration therefore is making no contingency plans for a reversal. None of that sounds reassuring to Watson, who owns a medical transport service in rural north-central Florida.
"It's scary," she said. "They need to look at this carefully, because it is going to affect a lot of people with a lot of bad conditions who are not going to have any health-care coverage."
The temporary program is meant to serve as a patch until 2014, when the federal health-care law will require insurers to accept all applicants, including cancer patients like Watson, regardless of medical history.
The law's controversial mandate for individuals to carry health insurance is related to that guaranteed acceptance provision. By forcing healthy people to buy insurance, it would help keep premiums in check.
Watson says she still disagrees with Obama's requirement that individuals have health insurance, either through an employer, a government program or by purchasing their own plan.
"I approve of some of it," she said of the law, "I don't approve of the mandatory ... insurance."
But she doesn't want to go back to depending on the emergency room.
"I have no problem paying my insurance and paying my co-pays," she said. "I just think I should have the right to purchase insurance."
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Find out more about the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan at: www.pcip.gov
