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United States News Title: Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare Avik Roy, Contributor On Wednesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius testified before Congress about the continuing issues with the rollout of Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges. “Hold me accountable for the debacle,” said Sebelius. “I’m responsible.” I attended the hearing, and I was struck by the scope, scale, and depth of the health law’s problems, problems that far exceed any one political appointee. But Obamacare’s disruption of the existing health insurance market—a disruption codified in law, and known to the administration—is only just beginning. And it’s far broader than recent media coverage has implied. Obama administration knew that Obamacare would disrupt private plans If you read the Affordable Care Act when it was passed, you knew that it was dishonest for President Obama to claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” as he did—and continues to do—on countless occasions. And we now know that the administration knew this all along. It turns out that in an obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, administration officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market. [...] Mid-range estimate: 51% of employer-sponsored plans will get canceled But Carney’s dismissal of the media’s concerns was wrong, on several fronts. Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance. Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection. “The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013. Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons. How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans. Will these canceled plans be replaced with better coverage? President Obama’s famous promise that “you could keep your plan” was not some naïve error or accident. He, and his allies, knew that previous Democratic attempts at health reform had failed because Americans were happy with the coverage they had, and opposed efforts to change the existing system. Now, supporters of the law are offering a different argument. “We didn’t really mean it when we said you could keep your plan,” they say, “but it doesn’t matter, because the coverage you’re going to get under Obamacare will be better than the coverage you had before.” But that’s not true. Obamacare forces insurers to offer services that most Americans don’t need, don’t want, and won’t use, for a higher price. Bob Laszewski, in a revealing blog post, wrote about the cancellation of his own health coverage. “Right now,” he wrote, “I have ‘Cadillac’ health insurance. I can access every provider in the national Blue Cross network—about every doc and hospital in America—without a referral and without higher deductibles and co-pays.” But his plan is being canceled. His new, Obamacare-compatible plan has a $500 higher deductible, and a narrower physician and hospital network that restricts out-of-town providers. And yet it costs 66 percent more than his current plan. “Mr. President,” he writes, “I really like my health plan and I would like to keep it. Can you help me out here?” [snip]
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#1. To: nolu chan (#0)
Hey Chan. Good article. I see you are kicking liberal suck ass over at the peoples scrotum. Tell Destro/Godwinson to get his mouth off of Obama's asshole. That guy is the stupidest person on that site. Even dumber then Robin. And that is dumb.
You might say the stuff I have been posting has received mixed reviews. I got real tired of reading that everyone this side of Karl Marx was a traitor, seditious, a terrorist, arsonist or suicide bomber, etc. It's normally peaceful over there, but where Obama is concerned they seem to be affected by Obama Derangement Syndrome. And the initial enrollments have been obtained by subpoena and on Day 1, six (6) people enrolled. On 3 Oct, a war room memo says "As of yesterday, there were 248 enrollments." And the administration wants to talk about millions of visitors and accounts.
For 2014, a "bad apple" policy may be renewed in December 2013 and be good until December 2014 (even if it was scheduled to expire after 1 Jan 2014). After 1 Jan 2014, the bad apple policy cannot be issued. That can push an Obamacare decision back to December 2014. In 2018 (IIRC) a 40% excise tax will be placed on "Cadillac" plans, very good plans with low deductibles of a specified value. That 40% is on the total value of the plan. A $1K a month, $12K plan would incur a $4,800 tax. Employers are not likely to just eat that. They will reduce or drop coverage.
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