It's a striking statistic. Without President Barack Obama's health care law, as many as 129 million Americans - half of those under age 65 - could be denied coverage or charged more because of a pre-existing medical condition. The new estimate by the Health and Human Services Department is more than twice as high as a figure that supporters of the law were using last year. It just might need an asterisk. Most of those millions of people are covered by health insurance at work and don't face any immediate risk of being denied care for their pre-existing medical problems. And as a rule, those who take a new job and sign up in their employer's health plan are already protected by a 1990s law.
