Group health insurers, and that includes essentially all employer provided insurance does not, cannot, and hasn't been denied to people with preexisting conditions for many years. More than 30 years if I recall correctly. Obamacare has nothing to do with that.
Before Obamacare, a number of states allowed single employee "groups" since a small business might start with one employee. Those policies did not deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
Insurers of last resort, and programs run by states have also provided insurance for people who were otherwise uninsurable in the underwritten individual market before Obamacare was put in place.
The whole "I couldn't get insurance" BS really boils down to "I couldn't get insurance from a particular insurer in the individually underwritten market, and I didn't take advantage of any of the other ways to get insurance coverage."
Of course the solution, Obamacare, is worse. Now the cancer patient gets an expensive, high deductible policy, but their policy in many locales doesn't cover any services at the kind of hospital a cancer patient needs to be treated at.
Here in New Hampshire you can get an Obamacare policy regardless of your health history, but it won't cover you at Dana Farber, or Mass General, or any of the other places you might need to go to save your life. And if your kid gets really sick you won't have insurance at Children's Hospital either. How is that a solution to the supposed cancer patient's problem?
Tying insurance to employment arrangements was a crude way of managing a risk pool, but at least it did.
It was figured, correctly, that if you could work, you were well enough off that it was a feasible risk to cover both you and yours, with some mild restrictions and delays.
Obamacare has brought an “atomization bomb” to the picture. This is just like so many soi-disant “liberals” — to incentivize the fracturing of effort, the fracturing of society.
Not necessarily. You had to prove that you were uninsured for at least 6 months before you could apply for most state high risk pools.
You could easily be denied coverage by every insurer in a state yet be ineligible for any state-owned program.