The left and media assume if you don’t support Obamacare, then you cannot want to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions. False.

For months, liberals have wanted to make the midterm elections about Obamacare, specifically people with pre-existing conditions. Of late, the media has gladly played into that narrative.

Numerous articles have followed upon a similar theme: Republicans claim they want to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but they’re lying, misrepresenting their records, or both. Most carry an implicit assumption: If you don’t support Obamacare, then you cannot want to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions, because defending the law as holy writ has become a new religion for the left.

Of course, several important elements get lost in this overly simplistic equation. Here’s what the media hasn’t bothered to focus on.

Covering People Before They Develop Conditions

The Kaiser Family Foundation noted in a study earlier this year that the off-exchange individual insurance market shrank by 38 percent in just one year, from the beginning of 2017 to the beginning of 2018. Overall, enrollment in Obamacare-compliant plans for people who do not qualify for income-based subsidies fell by 2.6 million:

Most of these individuals likely dropped their plan because the rapid rise in insurance rates under Obamacare has priced them out of coverage. As a Heritage Foundation study from March noted, the pre-existing condition provisions represent the largest component of those premium increases.

After pricing literally millions of people out of the marketplace precisely because of Obamacare’s pre-existing condition regulations, Democrats’ plan to protect those individuals if they suddenly come down with a pre-existing condition is—what, exactly? “Please don’t get diagnosed with cancer until next year’s open enrollment, so you can get covered then”?

Or consider the at least 4.7 million people who received cancellation notices a few short years ago, because their plan didn’t comport with Obamacare’s new regulations. The father of a friend and former colleague received such a notice. He lost his plan, couldn’t afford a new Obamacare-compliant policy, then got diagnosed with colon cancer. His “coverage” has consisted largely of a GoFundMe page, where friends and colleagues can help his family pay off tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt.

How exactly did Obamacare “protect” him—by stripping him of his coverage, or by pricing the new coverage so high he and his wife couldn’t afford it, and had to go without at the exact time they developed a pre-existing condition?

The left seemingly only cares about covering people once they develop pre-existing conditions. Their political messaging has done nothing for the millions of people who want to buy insurance before they develop a pre-existing condition, but have been priced out of the marketplace.

In fact, by getting politicians of both parties to claim that they want to cover people with pre-existing conditions, this campaign may actually encourage more healthy people to drop their insurance, thinking they can easily buy coverage if they do develop a costly condition.

Obamacare Plans Discriminate Too

The left’s messaging also ignores another inconvenient truth: Because they must accept all applicants, Obamacare plans have a strong incentive to avoid sick people. They can accomplish this goal through tactics like narrow provider networks. Because plans must offer rich benefits and accept all applicants, shrinking doctor and hospital networks provides one of the few ways to moderate premiums. Of course, keeping a clinic like the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center out of one’s network—which all Texas-based Obamacare plans do—also discourages cancer patients from signing up for coverage, a “win-win” from the insurer’s perspective.

Some plans have used more overt forms of discrimination. For instance, in 2014 a group of HIV patients filed a complaint against several Florida insurers. The complaint alleged that the carriers placed all their HIV drugs into the highest formulary tier, to discourage HIV-positive patients from signing up for coverage.

In these and other cases, Obamacare’s pre-existing condition “protections” have done nothing but “protect” people with medical conditions from accessing coverage—because the incentives the law has created encourage insurers to skimp on care.

Problem with Pre-Existing Condition Provisions

More than 18 months ago, I wrote that Republicans could either maintain the status quo on pre-existing conditions, or they could repeal Obamacare, but they could not do both. That scenario remains as true today as it did then.

Also true: As long as the pre-existing condition “protections” remain in place, millions of individuals will likely remain priced out of coverage, and insurers will have reason to discriminate against the sick. In fact, the last several years of premium spikes have already turned the exchanges into a de facto high-risk pool, where only the sickest (or most heavily subsidized) patients bother enrolling.

For individuals with pre-existing conditions, there are several—and, in my view, better—alternatives to both the status quo and the status quo ante that preceded Obamacare. But we will never have a chance to have that conversation if few will examine the very real trade-offs the law has created. Based on the past few months, neither the left nor the media appear interested in doing so.