A loophole in the Senate healthcare bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses, such as cancer. The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote. As currently written, the Senate Democratic healthcare bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not "unreasonable." The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.
