Quote:
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.
bama
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.
No,
David Axelrod, The 'Vast Majority of People In This Country' Are Not Keeping
Their PlanChris
ConoverContributor
Double
Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99%
For Men, 62% For WomenAvik
RoyContributor
Delta
Air Lines: Next Year, Our Health Care Costs Will Increase By 'Nearly $100
Million'Avik
RoyContributor
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.
On
Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney attempted to minimize the disruption
issue, arguing that it only affected people who buy insurance on their own.
“That’s the universe we’re talking about, 5 percent of the population,” said
Carney. “In some of the coverage of this issue in the last several days, you
would think that you were talking about 75 percent or 80 percent or 60 percent
of the American population.” (5 percent of the population happens to be 15
million people, no small number, but let’s leave that
aside.)
By
“coverage of this issue,” Carney was referring to two articles. The first, by
Chad Terhune of the Los
Angeles Times, described a
number of Californians who are seeing their existing plans terminated and
replaced with much more expensive ones. “I was all for Obamacare until I found
out I was paying for it,” said one.
The second
article, by Lisa Myers and Hanna Rappleye of NBC News, unearthed the
aforementioned commentary in the Federal
Register, and cited “four sources deeply involved in the Affordable
Care Act” as saying that “50 to 75 percent” of people who buy coverage on their
own are likely to receive cancellation notices due to
Obamacare.
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 theFederal
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 theRegister.
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?”
Congress
proposes a straightforward solution
Senator
Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.) have proposed the “If
You Like Your Health Care Plan You Can Keep It Act,” with dozens of co-sponsors.
The two-page
bill simply states that “nothing in [the Affordable Care Act]
shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage under a
group health plan or health insurance coverage in which such individual was
enrolled during any part of the period beginning on the date of enactment of
this Act and ending on December 31, 2013.”
Some
Senate Democrats are jumping on the grandfathering bandwagon. Mary Landrieu (D.,
La.), locked in a competitive
reelection race against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), now claims
that she was unaware that Obamacare would disrupt existing insurance
arrangements. “It was our understanding when we voted for that bill that people
when they have insurance could keep with what they had. So I’m going to be
working on that fix,” she said on
Wednesday.
But
that’s not accurate. It was well known, as far
back as 2009, that millions of Americans would lose their existing
coverage under the Obamacare bill. Landrieu still voted for it. In September of
2010, Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.)introduced
legislation that would protect small businesses from losing
their health plans’ grandfathered status under Obamacare. Landrieu voted
against the bill, on a party-line vote.
But
Landrieu’s flip-flop illustrates the potency of this issue. If Americans were
truly being forced off of their existing insurance plans—that they like—and into
better and more affordable ones, the outcry would be minimal. But that isn’t
what’s happening. People are being forced into inferior and costlier plans. And
they’re making their displeasure felt in Washington.
No comments:
Post a Comment