Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance

[Dave]

Imagine it... a politician not being honest to their constituents... almost hard to believe isn't it? Yet, the president even as recently as yesterday the president was suggesting that you could still keep your current insurance if you liked it... without the caveat that you could keep it as long as it met their standards. The president's pledge has been rewarded with 4 Pinocchio's from the Washington's Post fact checking board.. basically saying that the pledge is garbage.

Watching Obamacare rollout is pretty much like watching a trainwreck... you know its not going to get any better the longer it goes.

By Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye
NBC News

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

This story has been republished here

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” 

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”  

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them. 

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said  Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.

The White House does not dispute that many in the individual market will lose their current coverage, but argues they will be offered better coverage in its place, and that many will get tax subsidies that would offset any increased costs.

“One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions.  The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits,” said White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo.

“Nothing in the Affordable Care Act forces people out of their health plans: The law allows plans that covered people at the time the law was enacted to continue to offer that same coverage to the same enrollees – nothing has changed and that coverage can continue into 2014,” she said.

Individual insurance plans with low premiums often lack basic benefits, such as prescription drug coverage, or carry high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. The Affordable Care Act requires all companies to offer more benefits, such as mental health care, and also bars companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.

Today, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about the president’s promise that consumers would be able to keep their health care. “What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide,” Carney said. “So it's true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.”

Courtesy of Heather Goldwater

Heather Goldwater, 38, of South Carolina, says that she received a letter from her insurer saying the company would no longer offer her plan, but hasn't yet received a follow-up letter with a comparable option.

Other experts said that most consumers in the individual market will not be able to keep their policies. Nancy Thompson, senior vice president of CBIZ Benefits, which helps companies manage their employee benefits, says numbers in this market are hard to pin down, but that data from states and carriers suggests “anywhere from 50 to 75 percent” of individual policy holders will get cancellation letters. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who chairs the health committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, says that estimate is “probably about right.” She added that a few states are asking insurance companies to cancel and replace policies, rather than just amend them, to avoid confusion.

A spokesman for America's Health Plans says there are no precise numbers on how many will receive cancellations letters or get notices that their current policies don’t meet ACA standards. In both cases, consumers will not be able to keep their current coverage.

Those getting the cancellation letters are often shocked and unhappy.

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.

And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.

"The deductible is less," he said, "But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable."

"I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick," Schwab added. "Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable."
 
Heather Goldwater, 38, of South Carolina, is raising a new baby while running her own PR firm. She said she received a letter last July from Cigna, her insurance company, that said the company would no longer offer her individual plan, and promised to send a letter by October offering a comparable option. So far, she hasn't received anything.
 
"I'm completely overwhelmed with a six-month-old and a business,” said Goldwater. “The last thing I can do is spend hours poring over a website that isn't working, trying to wrap my head around this entire health care overhaul."

Goldwater said she supports the new law and is grateful for provisions helping folks like her with pre-existing conditions, but she worries she won’t be able to afford the new insurance, which is expected to cost more because it has more benefits. "I'm jealous of people who have really good health insurance," she said. "It's people like me who are stuck in the middle who are going to get screwed."
 
Richard Helgren, a Lansing, Mich., retiree, said he was “irate” when he received a letter informing him that his wife Amy's $559 a month health plan was being changed because of the law. The plan the insurer offered raised his deductible from $0 to $2,500, and the company gave him 17 days to decide.

The higher costs spooked him and his wife, who have painstakingly planned for their retirement years. "Every dollar we didn't plan for erodes our standard of living," Helgren said.

Ulltimately, though Helgren opted not to shop through the ACA exchanges, he was able to apply for a good plan with a slightly lower premium through an insurance agent.

He said he never believed President Obama’s promise that people would be able to keep their current plans.

"I heard him only about a thousand times," he said. "I didn't believe him when he said it though because there was just no way that was going to happen. They wrote the regulations so strictly that none of the old polices can grandfather."

For months, Laszewski has warned that some consumers will face sticker shock. He recently got his own notice that he and his wife cannot keep their current policy, which he described as one of the best, so-called "Cadillac" plans offered for 2013. Now, he said, the best comparable plan he found for 2014 has a smaller doctor network, larger out-of-pocket costs, and a 66 percent premium increase.

“Mr. President, I like the coverage I have," Laszweski said. "It is the best health insurance policy you can buy."

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-a...

[Dave]

You know things are bad when the Huffington Post is taking shots at the bogus promises made by the president.......

What Obama Really Meant When He Said 'If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It'

Way, way back before time itself began, President Barack Obama said these words, in reference to the Affordable Care Act: "If you like your plan, you can keep it." And then, as Daily Intel's Dan Amira pointed out Tuesday, he said it a bunch more times!

Well, the news today is that lots of people aren't going to keep the plans that they are on, and are receiving notice from their health insurance providers that they will be shunted onto different, perhaps more expensive plans. And they no likey. But the White House is furiously pushing back, all the same.

So what gives? Well, to answer that question we have to go to Spin School, and re-examine this line, "If you like your plan, you can keep it." At first blush, it seems pretty straightforward. As with any political quip, however, it sort of contains multitudes. But, to begin with a bottom line, the answer to the question of, "Is this still a true statement?" is basically, "Kind of?" But the words "plan" and "like" are doing a lot of heavy lifting to make that possible.

Let's begin with the whole notion of continuity -- the literal truth about whether a "plan" that you currently have can be "kept." One of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act is a grandfathering clause, intended to exempt the employer-sponsored insurance plans that were in existence at the time of the Affordable Care Act's passage from having to follow the contours of the Affordable Care Act. The problem with the line, "If you like your plan, you can keep it," is that it suggests that what's being grandfathered, here, is the customer's possession of a plan. But what was actually grandfathered were the plans that existed at the time, themselves.

What that means is that everyone could retain their plans so long as no alteration was made to those plans by their providers. However, the very minute a provider made a tweak to those plans, they lost the grandfather protection, and compliance with the Affordable Care Act's new standards became necessary.

There was actually a big fight about this back in September 2010. At that time, the Department of Health and Human Services was pretty forthright about what was likely to happen. As Julian Pecquet of The Hill reported back in 2010:

The Department of Health and Human Services released preliminary regulations in June. They state that plans would lose their grandfathered status if coinsurance and copayments increase more than a specified amount, for example.

According to HHS estimates:

--40 percent to 67 percent of individual policies will lose grandfathered status by 2011;

--34 percent to 64 percent of large employer group plans (100 or more employees) will lose their grandfathered status by 2013: and

--49 percent to 80 percent of small employer group plans (three to 99 employees) will lose their grandfathered status by 2013.

In other words, your plan is grandfathered in unless your insurer explicitly makes it worse by jacking up your deductible or otherwise monkeying with your coverage in an attempt to screw you, which is the basic stated business model of insurance companies.

So, you were warned, but you were warned very quietly. And as time passed, that warning did not manage to garner the same amount of attention as, "If you like your plan, you can keep it."

Nevertheless, when you hear the words, "If you like your plan, you can keep it," do you immediately think to yourself, "Of course by that they mean I'll keep my plan provided that, say, my copayment never changes?" No, you don't. You are a normal human being, accustomed to straightforward-sounding things meaning what they seem to imply.

The other part of the sentence that's sitting there trying to be all razzle-dazzle instead of attaching itself to its simple meaning is the word "like." A lot of people like their health insurance plans for different reasons, but one primary reason so many people "like" their plan is that they like the low, low price of the premium. Of course, as they say, "You get what you pay for," and the insurance market is no different.

There are many insurance plans with eminently likeable costs that are not so likeable once you start using the plan. Some cheap plans offer only high-deductible catastrophic coverage. Other cheap plans have lifetime caps on coverage -- which means that if you suffer a major injury or illness that requires long-term or very costly medical care, your insurance company is eventually going to hit the cap and leave you holding the bag and facing the prospect of disastrous debt.

The Obama administration's argument here basically boils down to, "Well, you shouldn't like those plans!" And, indeed, one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act exists in the first place to reform the insurance market so that plans like this no longer exist.

Over at The Washington Post, Erik Wemple takes on the curious case of Dianne Barrette, who is this minute's poster child for the evils of Obamacare:

More coverage may provide a deeper understanding of the ins and outs of Barrette’s situation: Her current health insurance plan, she says, doesn’t cover “extended hospital stays; it’s not designed for that,” says Barrette. Well, does it cover any hospitalization? “Outpatient only,” responds Barrette. Nor does it cover ambulance service and some prenatal care. On the other hand, says Barrette, it does cover “most of my generic drugs that I need” and there’s a $50 co-pay for doctors’ appointments. “It’s all I could afford right now,” says Barrette. In sum, it’s a pray-that-you-don’t-really-get-sick “plan.”

Steve Benen follows up like so:

If this woman had a serious ailment and was forced to stay in the hospital for a while, her old plan would have likely destroyed her financial life permanently, leaving her bankrupt. Now, thanks to “Obamacare,” in the event of a disaster, she’ll be protected with coverage her insurer can’t take away -– with no annual or lifetime caps. In other words, the new horror story for critics of the health care law features a middle-aged woman trading a bad plan for a good plan, and health care insecurity for health care security. What’s more, while much of the coverage of Barrette’s situation has focused on the higher monthly cost of her new, better insurance plan, there’s another detail that’s been overlooked by some: she’ll be eligible for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The cost of the coverage isn’t what she’ll actually have to pay out of her own pocket.

Yeah, you see, that's sort of the whole point of the Affordable Care Act -- it creates health insurance exchanges where people who find themselves in this situation can get relief from situations like this, obtaining health insurance at competitive prices that offer more bang for the buck and remove the worry of people falling into crippling indebtedness because of that one time they really, really didn't want to die.

Nevertheless, if you are someone who's received notice that you are losing your insurance coverage, that's a traumatic thing to experience, even if your insurance coverage is objectively terrible.

And you know, the one thing that would really help people in that situation, and the Obama administration itself, would be, say ... a fully functioning website on which normal human Americans could sign up for health care coverage on the exchanges. If such a thing existed, many if not all of these "I got screwed by my health insurance provider, thanks Nobama!" stories could be easily parried. Unfortunately, that fully functioning website does not yet exist.

Even still, the phrase "If you like your plan, you can keep it" tends to suggest that there will be some widespread, "keeping" of plans. This turns out not to be the case. Nevertheless, the Obama administration can argue that all of this was well known before now. As Jonathan Chait points out:

Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance was intended to convey that those who already had insurance through their job or through Medicare would not be forced into the new health-care exchanges.

On the one hand, this failed to convey the blunt reality that people in the individual insurance market who had skimpy coverage and wanted to keep it could not. On the other hand, the administration never denied this fact. The designers of Obamacare straightforwardly believed that the regulation of the individual-health-insurance market was fully consistent with its promise, even though people already in that market were bound to face changes.

Chait points to a 2010 New York Times story that made all of this clear:

In some respects, the rules appear to fall short of the sweeping commitments President Obama made while trying to reassure the public in the fight over health legislation.

In issuing the rules, the administration said this was just one goal of the legislation, allowing people to “keep their current coverage if they like it.” It acknowledged that some people, especially those who work at smaller businesses, might face significant changes in the terms of their coverage, and it said they should be able to “reap the benefits of additional consumer protections.”

Still, we are left with this phrase, "If you like your plan, you can keep it," that probably should have come with a bit of fine-print reading, "Some restrictions apply, void where prohibited."

One thing that's worth wondering about here is whether the media's overarching attention to finding some cheap gotcha moments to bedevil political figures for a newscycle or three doesn't end up adding to the confusion. After all, the circumstances that are driving today's crisis-cycle were all things that were reported back in 2010. There has been a more than adequate period of time to ask more significant questions about the president's quip, and to instruct the public as to what was coming, in the service of keeping the populace informed and prepared.

Nevertheless, the simple fact of the matter is this: To any normal person, making the tacit assumption that words don't have any hidden meanings or exceptions, "If you like your plan, you can keep it" sounds like a pretty clear, right-to-the-point certainty on which one should be able to rely. When that sentence lands in the ear of a normal human being, it conveys the promise of continuity, and relief from any shocking news about losing one's coverage.

That promise has been broken, and now, the White House has to reel and offer some sputtering explanation as to how the promise is actually being kept, as long as you hear that sentence in a different way. Sure, yes, there were some news stories that served as the harbingers of today's bad news, but "If you like your plan, you can keep it" was uttered again and again, in spite of this.

I get why the administration wanted to utter this glib pronouncement. "If you like it, keep it." It's simple, to the point, easy to understand, and ready-made for our sound-bite age. In that way, the quip is very much unlike Obamacare, and much more like the plan that was never considered -- single payer. With Medicare for all, you pay taxes and the government covers your medical bills. That's it. No websites, no marketplaces, nothing fancy that's sure to break.

But hey, live by the glib pronouncement, die by the glib pronouncement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/if-you-like-your-plan-you-...

[Willy]

Obama is such a #@%$* liar and that's one of the most frustrating things about those that support him. He's a compulsive liar but the liberal no brained idiots and press just keep propping him up. We all see what's happening yet he continues to lie even though he's been proven to be lying. Obama is by far the worst President in our History.

[Willy]

Good article Dave. It's only going to get worse when 2014 begins. I hope the U.S. economy is not destabilized by this monstrous abomination. 

[Dave]

Reports now are that only 6 people signed up for Obamacare on Oct 1st and was only at 248 by the 3rd day. They need to have something like 34,000 sign up everyday for the thing to work. Safe to say they got some issues to deal with.

[easymoney]

The First Hustler Runs the Big Con

 

"Nothing is lost save honor."

So said Jim Fisk after he and Jay Gould survived yet another scrape in their corrupt and storied careers in the Gilded Age

Fisk's dismissal of honor came to mind while watching Barack Obama in Boston smugly explain how his vow — "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it!" — was now inoperative.

All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler.

In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled.

That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were "substandard" plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of "bad-apple insurers."

"So if you're getting one of those letters (canceling your insurance plan), just shop around in the new marketplace. ... You're going to get a better deal."

Behind the arrogance is the realty: Obama has the veto power. No alteration of Obamacare, except for changes he approves, can be made before the winter of 2017. And by then, Obamacare will be so deeply embedded in law and practice it will be beyond repeal.

We won, you lost, was written across Obama's face.

Yet, Obama's victory calls to mind that of King Pyrrhus of Epirus over the Romans at Asculum as described by Plutarch. Counting up his dead friends, dead commanders and dead soldiers, the king remarked, "One more such victory and we are undone."

The price Obama will be a long time paying for this victory is historic and huge.

First, there is the irreversible damage to his credibility and integrity. He conned the people into believing something he knew to be false — that all Americans would be allowed to keep the health care plans that they had and liked.

This assurance, repeated again and again, helped disarm the opposition. Americans who liked their doctors and insurance plans and were repeatedly told they could keep both were not only relieved; they became more receptive to the idea of helping the less fortunate.

Obama's assurances of keeping your insurance plan if you like it now enters presidential history alongside George H.W.

Bush's "Read my lips! No new taxes," Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and George W. Bush's tales of yellow cake in Niger and hidden arsenals of WMDs.

As for the idealistic avatar of hope and change from 2008, who led the nation to believe that he was something new and different in politics, he has been revealed as the biggest cynic of them all.

Moreover, where his campaign against Hillary Clinton in the primaries and John McCain in 2008 seemed to hold out promise of a newly competent progressive crowd, those hopes have all but vanished in the legendary incompetence of the Obamacare rollout.

Here was the president's signature program — what Social Security was to FDR, Medicare to LBJ — and one month into launch, it is grist for the mills of Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central.

Observing the rollout, one begins to appreciate what George Wallace meant when he talked of Washington being a city of "pointy-headed bureaucrats who can't park a bicycle straight."

And though the Obamacare website will one day be repaired, and people may begin to sign up, the land mines in Obamacare are by no means all exploded. We will be walking right through them.

As Obamacare requires the cancellation of insurance plans and forces Americans to buy more expensive insurance than they want, this will inevitably raise the cost of health care for the nation.

And when the employer mandates cut in, many businesses will halt hiring at 49 employees to keep out of Obamacare, as others cut part-time workers to 29 hours a week to escape the mandates.

This cannot but adversely impact an economy whose growth in job creation under Obama has been anemic at best for five years.

Obama and cohorts are celebrating an historic achievement in passing Obamacare. But as one looks at Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Puerto Rico, Detroit and Illinois, the truth seems obvious.

The welfare state that began with Bismarck is reaching the end of the line, just as the private sector that generates the wealth to sustain that state is now, almost everywhere, buckling under its weight. The deficits stretch to the horizon. The debts rise inexorably.

Across the West, neo-socialism is out, the new austerity in.

And of all the great advances proclaimed by progressives over a century and a half, from free schooling to Social Security, Obamacare looks like it will eventually be ranked among the last — and the least.

[Willy]

Easy. Wonderful article. This was written by Pat Buchanan  right?

[XLFD]

Yup, Patrick J. Buchanan in Townhall has it:  http://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2013/11/01/the-first-hus...