Most individual health plans fall short of ObamaCare mandates: study

Health Affairs ^ | 24 May 2012 | Jon Gabel et al.

[tellw]

More Than Half Of Individual Health Plans Offer Coverage That Falls Short Of What Can Be Sold Through Exchanges As Of 2014

Abstract The Affordable Care Act creates state-based health exchanges that will begin acting as a market place for health insurance plans and consumers in 2014. This paper compares the financial protection offered by today’s group and individual plans with the standards that will apply to insurance sold in state-based exchanges. Some states may apply these standards to all health insurance sold within the state. More than half of Americans who had individual insurance in 2010 were enrolled in plans that would not qualify as providing essential coverage under the rules of the exchanges in 2014. These people were enrolled in plans with an actuarial value below 60 percent, which means that the plans covered less than that proportion of the enrollees’ health expenses. Many of today’s individual health plans are below the “bronze” level, the lowest level of plan that can be sold through exchanges. In contrast, most group plans in 2010 had an actuarial benefit of 80–89 percent and would qualify as highly rated “gold” plans in the exchanges. To sell to ten million new buyers on the exchanges, insurers will need to redesign benefit packages. Combined with a ban on medical underwriting, the individual insurance market in a post–health reform world will sharply contrast with the market of past decades

[tellw]

"If you like the insurance you can have, you can keep it." Barrack H. Obama, 2010

[pepsionice]

I think the key part about this phrase...is “if you like”, because if the policy became too expensive, then you wouldn’t like it, and obviously....he’d be correct then.

He didn’t say that your policy would stay at the same price-level, and he knew that it would become too expensive for you to afford, under any condition.

[tellw]

I am sure one of these guys explained it.

[RWB Patriot]

I think that’s the point: Make plans too expensive so dear leader can put us all on the government’s plan, while he and his cronies keep the good plans for themselves.