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The systemwide defects in Obamacare mounted Monday, from compounding enrollment problems to soaring insurance cancellations to breaches of privacy, as the Obama administration struggled to contain the political damage and repair its laughingstock health care website. The number of people receiving cancellation notices from their insurers rose to more than 3.5 million, in spite of President Obama’s debunked pledge that Americans could keep their plans if they liked them. Mr. Obama’s subsequent reassurances that people who lose coverage can “just shop around” is increasingly a dead end for consumers who can’t access the government’s malfunctioning website or can’t get their...

Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

**SNIP** CNN reports that insurers had nothing to do with it in at least three states, where the states themselves forced the cancellations in order to comply with ObamaCare: President Obama may have promised Americans that they can keep their insurance if they like it, but that’s not the case in at least three states where insurance companies are required to discontinue plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s new coverage standards. Virginia, Kentucky and Idaho have told insurance companies that they must scrap insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements laid out in the Affordable Care Act. Some states...

Following shocking revelations exposed by NBC News that the Obama Administration knew millions of Americans would lose their health insurance under ObamaCare, the folks at MSNBC have been doing their best to provide cover for President Obama and Democrats in Congress. Despite this damning revelation, MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts sees private insurance companies as the real culprit, not ObamaCare which forces consumers to purchase insurance benefits they do not need. Roberts claims that the problem is: Not so much about defending Igor [Volsky] to their constituents, but explaining to constituents that you had a subpar junk policy that does not meet...

DECEPTION: In the face of millions of cancellation notices, Democrats want to downplay the president's "keep your health plan" pledge as standard political hyperbole. It was, in fact, a calculated lie that got ObamaCare enacted.

Obamacare is meant to provide health coverage to the millions of Americans who don't have it, but the cruel irony is that millions of other Americans may lose their current health insurance as a result. These "losers" are primarily people who buy their own health insurance rather than have it provided by an employer. Many now find their plans will be canceled because they fail to meet the minimum coverage requirements under Obamacare. These plans offer "bare bones insurance...usually catastrophic care...and beginning Jan. 1 insurance companies will not be allowed to offer these very plans," says Rick Newman, Yahoo Finance...

On Tuesday, the White House finally came up with a strategy to explain why millions of Americans are losing their health insurance plans — blame the insurance companies.White House spokesman Jay Carney rewrote President Barack Obama’s much-repeated “you can keep it” promise Tuesday afternoon, and began blaming health insurance companies for canceling millions of individuals’ insurance plans.“If you had a plan… and you liked it, and you’ve kept it, you can keep if forever as long as your insurer offers it,” Carney told reporters during the daily press briefing.In the last few weeks, insurance companies have already canceled more than...

... John Maginnis, vice president of corporate communications for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, said plans for 10,000 of its 130,000 individual market policy holders will be discontinued because they don’t meet the requirements of the new law. Meanwhile, another 75,000 — or about 60 percent of the company’s individual policy holders — are being grandfathered in, he said. In November, Humana is poised to notify 9,000 Louisiana policy holders — or about 18,000 people — that their individual health insurance plans will be affected by the implementation of the law. Despite the political and public relations fiasco that...

Insurance companies aren't sending out cancellation letters, they're helping people "transition" into Obamacare, according to a top Democrat. "If [the companies] changed [the insurance plans] then they have to notify the people who have to have the opportunity to have another policy," said House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sander Levin, D-Mich.

Let's start with the very basics here. About 15 million people purchase health insurance policies on the individual market. That's about 5 percent of the population. Some -- or maybe even most -- of the plans offered on the individual insurance market right now don't meet certain requirements in the health-care law. They may not offer preventive care without co-payment, for example, or leave out coverage of maternity care, one of the health-care law's 10 essential benefits. How many people are going to get cancellation notices? It's hard to put an exact number on this, given that insurance plans are...

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer conceded to reporters today that Democrats knew people would not be able to keep their current health care plans under Obamacare and expressed qualified contrition for President Obama’s repeated vows to the contrary. “We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response to a question from National Review.

A set of health care service categories that must be covered by certain plans, starting in 2014. The Affordable Care Act ensures health plans offered in the individual and small group markets, both inside and outside of the Health Insurance Marketplace, offer a comprehensive package of items and services, known as essential health benefits. Essential health benefits must include items and services within at least the following 10 categories: ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services;...

CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies -- more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. There have been estimates about hundreds of thousands of people losing coverage, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported on "CBS This Morning." CBS News has reached out to insurance companies across the country to determine some of the real numbers -- and this is just the tip of the iceberg, Crawford said. The people who are opening the letters...

Covered California executive director Peter Lee told the Chronicle editorial board that he expects 800,000 to 900,000 people to lose their non-grandfathered private insurance policies on Dec. 31, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. (This figure — which is higher than past numbers reported – does not include small business coverage.) “The individual market is changing dramatically,” Lee said. What about President Obama’s promise that if people liked their plan, they could keep it? “I think it was not well stated,” Lee answered. Obama’s rhetoric “may have been an inarticulate way of describing what the realities are.” How many will...

The president: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” A new estimate from healthcare expert Bob Laszewski (via the Weekly Standard): The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are...

One promise—affordability— smashed into millions more pieces this morning. As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government...

We've been advised that our medical coverage will be dropped at the end of the year. We've paid for our own coverage for about the last 10 years. Others out there? It'd be interesting to send a list to the a$$holes in DC describing the extent of the problem. thx

“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” Obama said at one rally in July 2009. “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” But the president's promise is turning out to be false for millions of Americans who have had their health insurance policies canceled because they don't meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans...

Sorry for the vanity my FRiends, but I need to know if this is happening to others! Today my employer sent out an email stating that because of the Affordable Care Act, as of the beginning of the year, we can no longer use our Flex accounts to pay for anything related to medical care! It can still be used for dental and vision..but absolutely not for medical care! My coworkers and I have used our Flex plans to pay for office co-pays, prescriptions, exams, tests...anything medical-related. And that is no longer allowed thanks to the ACA! Eff you Obama!...

The hits just keep coming with every day that brings us closer to the full implementation of ObamaCare. This vile piece of illegal legislation continually rains body blows to the gut of hardworking Americans. The mainstream media is starting to cover the story because the entire fiasco is just too big to ignore, but they're still doing their level best to cover up for Obama. Prepare yourself to continue hearing about the "glitches" on the government's $600 million plus website and for the media to keep replaying Obama's speech where the talks about how "incensed" he is over the faulty...