Posted on 11/14/2013 10:02:55 AM PST by IbJensen
President Barack Obama announced a fix to the vexing problem of canceled health insurance policies Thursday, saying insurers don’t have to cancel plans next year just because of the Affordable Care Act.
Insurers can continue the plans for 2014 on two conditions — they have to tell people just what their plans don’t cover, and they have to tell people that they do have the option of going onto the health insurance exchanges to buy new plans with federal government subsidies and perhaps even to go onto Medicaid.
"Insurers can extend current plans that otherwise would have been cancelled in 2014," Obama said.
Critics of the health reform law, known widely as Obamacare, have made hay with reports that tens of thousands of people have been getting cancellation notices from their insurance companies, despite Obama’s repeated promises that people who like their insurance plans can keep them.
"This is something I deeply regret because it's scary getting a cancellation notice," Obama said at a news conference. "It’s on me. Those who got cancellation notices do deserve better and they received an apology from me. But they deserve more than words."
One main goal of Obamacare was to get rid of what the White House has called the worst abuses of the insurance industry -- caps on coverage, policies that charged women three to five times what a similar man was charged, policies that didn’t pay for cancer screening.
Some of the policies that have been canceled were very inexpensive, part of the reason for the outrage among those whose policies were canceled. But insurance and health industry experts say it’s because they were so bare-bones, they wouldn’t have paid for much if they were ever needed. The White House keeps stressing that the new rules level the playing field a little bit, but offer most people much more in terms of coverage than what they had before.
"A lot of people think, 'I've got pretty good health insurance', until they get sick," Obama said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has also pointed out that the policies being cancelled are mostly individual policies, not the big group policies offered by employers that cover most Americans. Those policies often change every year anyway, HHS says.
According to America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s group, 19 million Americans have individual plans.
Democrats who support the law have been pushing the White House to come up with some way to fix the problem. Health officials point out that it’s a very small percentage of people who are actually affected by the cancellations, but the political and public relations damage has been extensive.
Obama eventually apologized and on Wednesday he apologized again for the disastrous debut of the HealthCare.gov website.
"I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to,” he said. "Clearly we and I did not have enough awareness about the problems on the website," he added.
"We should have done a better job of getting this right on Day One...We did fumble the ball on it and one of the things I am going to do is make sure we get it fixed."
On Wednesday, the Health and Human Services Department released figures that show only 26,000 people got on the federally run website in October, the first month the exchanges were open.
Tech officials blamed poor management and political analysts said the site's failure was a new political low for the administration.
The new plan being announced by Obama gets out in front of a Republican-crafted plan that was due to come up in Congress on Friday. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called that GOP proposal “a very dangerous bill” that is “completely disruptive” to the insurance pools, characterizing it as simply another Republican attempt to gut – not repair – the underlying health care bill.
She said that Democrats will try to present their own legislative fix for a vote on Friday to complement Obama’s “administrative” approach.
“We are in agreement. We must have a fix, and we will,” she said.
One fear is that if too many people are allowed to keep their older, cheap policies, they won’t join the pool of people buying on the exchanges – and that’ll drive up prices next year for everyone else. The more healthy people are in the pool buying policies, the more they offset the sicker people in the pool, and the less insurance companies can charge everyone. White House officials said they’ll watch and see what happens in the next year, and tweak as necessary.
Price is the main concern of most Americans when it comes to buying insurance, and the Obama administration is keen to be able to say Obamacare is keeping prices low.
So if the insurance companies reinstate some of these policies it might mess with their new software and pricing schemes.
Or it might provide a way for hackers to move in on the insurance companies like they've been doing with HealthCare.gov.
Fustercluck is too mild a word for this.
“Those terrible health care plans that were harming working Americans? Obama is extending them?”
Good point!
first to comment that it’s Roberts’ fault.
:-)
The Architect Jonathan Gruber "Mitt's Wit from MIT" and the Enforcer Kathleen "the Sebaceous Cyst"
They will have to reinstate them...then they will get in trouble with the ACA law because they did...its a no win for them...lawyers will eat them up..crazy..here is the law...but I can change it every month if i want to...business can´t run like this...
All democrats will be automatically enrolled in Obamacare.
All republicans will continue to have the free market system of plans as before.
Independents will have the option of joining either system.
Both systems must be self supporting with no additional revenues from either the government or the other health care system.
Everyone should be happy that they have what they wanted.
So, insurance companies paid millions determining which policies do not comply and sending out cancellation notices, and now Obama tries* to change the rules.
Basically, Obama just offered up more market instability. It’s one of the things he’s really good at.
*Does he have the authority to even do that?
Obama’s just trying to save the 2014 elections for Democrats imo.
And since the SJC says it's a tax, it should be a forward tax, not a retroactive tax. You can't mix up the premium programs in mid-transition!
Obama is begging insurance companies to save his ass by renewing cancelled policies until after the next election.
Yes, I bet the lawyers can’t even keep up now.
He can do it, because he thinks he is a King.
One year? That’s ridiculous. Forever, or not at all.
“This is a typical slick move by Obama and the Dems. He’s taking the monkey off of their backs and putting on the insurance companies backs. If the insurance folks do not reinstate their old policies, the people will howl at them and Obama will also publicly flog them like a rented mule.”
I said weeks ago that the Dems would push this past the mid-terms; voters have to reminded that the doom has just been postponed, and that the realities of doing business (rather than evil corporations) caused the cancellations to begin with.
He’ll either create millions of new communists, or voters will call the Dems out on it.
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