Sen. Thom Tillis, hoping North Carolina's voters will be gullible enough to believe he cares about their health care.

Early this week, the Trump Department of Justice requested that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals expedite oral arguments in the Affordable Care Act appeal before it, the case Trump is using to argue for the total destruction of the law. The court has reportedly granted that request, and arguments will be heard in early July.

That puts additional pressure on Senate Republicans to do something about that "promise" from the White House that protecting people with pre-existing conditions is "non-negotiable" and will be in that supposed forthcoming Republican plan that we may or may not see before the 2020 election. Feeling that pressure, a handful of Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Thom Tillis (up for re-election in 2020 in North Carolina), are reintroducing a plan Tillis and a handful of others floated last year, the Wall Street Journal reports. The WSJ also reports that the plan "prohibits insurers from charging higher premiums to patients with pre-existing conditions and bars them from excluding coverage of treatments for those individuals."

Sounds good, but of course it's not true. The bill they are resurrecting gave lip service to those protections, telling insurers that they had to guarantee access for people with pre-existing conditions and that they would be prohibited from setting premiums based on health. Unless they are revising this legislation, it's got a very big loophole in it: It still allows insurers to exclude any coverage of the pre-existing conditions. So an insurer couldn't refuse you insurance if you had heart disease, but it could refuse to pay for your bypass surgery. It could not refuse you coverage if you have diabetes, but it could just refuse to pay for your insulin and syringes.

The bill they introduced last year also allowed insurers to vary premiums "based on age, gender, occupation, or leisure activities. Small business premiums could vary based on the health of their workers." So yeah, having lady parts means you can't be denied; you'll just have to pay more. Like in the old days. That's protection of pre-existing conditions in name only, allowing many of the previous abuses shut down by the Affordable Care Act to be revived.

This is "guaranteed issue" insurance, Republican-style. Meaning it's guaranteed that insurers are able to pick and choose what they cover.