A new web site has been developed where one can share stories regarding: loss of a trusted doctor, rate increases, lost access to a reasonably priced prescription, cancellations i.e. if you like your plan you can keep your plan.
The web site is sponsored by “ Independent Women’s Voice is a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization for mainstream women, men and families. IWV is the sister organization of the Independent Women’s Forum.”
The web site address is:
http://www.brokenobamacarepromises.com/
‘Last week, the White House took to Twitter for purposes of publicizing its latest Obamacare enrollment blarney. Far more informative than the tweet’s fictitious sign-up numbers was the schmaltzy video to which it was linked. Staged in the Oval Office, this one-act farce features a simpering HHS Secretary briefing our Thespian in Chief, who then delivers the following soliloquy: “The Affordable Care Act is working. It’s working better than we anticipated. It’s certainly working a lot better than many of the critics talked about early on.” In Obama’s 27-word script, “working” appears three times. The President doth protest too much, methinks.”
But don’t take my word for it. Ask the folks who learned last Friday that Obama’s bureaucrats sent them erroneous tax information relating to PPACA. The Associated Press reports, “Officials said the government sent the wrong tax information to about 800,000 HealthCare.gov customers, and they’re asking those affected to delay filing their 2014 returns.” And, as with most government blunders, the price will be paid by those who can least afford it. Robert Pear points out in the New York Times, “[T]housands of lower-income Americans who qualified for subsidized insurance had hoped for tax refunds and now must wait for weeks to file their taxes.”
Obama and his minions will, of course, rewrite PPACA’s tax and enrollment provisions in yet another attempt to contain the political damage wrought by the disastrous “reform” law. This is nothing new. It will merely be the latest of nearly 50 emergency revisions to which Obamacare has been subjected since it was signed into law. Prior to February’s pratfalls, according to a tally kept by the Galen Institute, “47 significant changes already have been made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: at least 28 that President Obama has made unilaterally, 17 that Congress has passed and the president has signed, and 2 by the Supreme Court.”’ - No, Mr. President, Obamacare Isn’t Working, The American Spectator, 02/23/2015
Link to the article appears below:
http://spectator.org/articles/61855/no-mr-president-obamacare-isn%E2%80%99t-working
“Some 200,000 Obamacare enrollees are about to be kicked off their insurance policies after they failed to confirm that they are legally living in the United States administration officials announced Thursday. Under the health law, people enrolled in exchange policies must be able to prove legal status.
Last summer, the administration announced that there were significant discrepancies in hundreds of thousands of Obamacare applications—specifically dealing with citizenship. Health officials sent out letters in August to about 300,000 enrollees with application discrepancies asking them to send in relevant documents to confirm their legal status and resolve the issue.
About 112,000 of those people never responded and got dropped from their plans in September.” - Thousands to Get Booted From Obamacare Plans, msnmoney, 02/13/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/insurance/thousands-to-get-booted-from-obamacare-plans/ar-AA9jMcE
Math Quest!
‘President Barack Obama said Thursday that eight million people had picked health-insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act, a number that significantly outstripped initial projections and emboldened him to step up criticism of Republicans seeking to repeal the law.
The president, in a surprise Thursday afternoon appearance in the White House briefing room, employed markedly more aggressive rhetoric in defending his signature legislative achievement, language that should help bolster Democratic candidates who have been on the defense.
The eight million sign-ups go beyond earlier projections by the Congressional Budget Office that six or seven million people would enroll through the exchanges in 2014. Mr. Obama pointed to the number to declare the law a success and that Republicans should stop trying to overturn it.
"The point is, the repeal debate is and should be over," the president said. "The Affordable Care Act is working and I know the American people don't want us spending the next 2½ years refighting the settled political battles of the last five years."
Some 35% of those who signed up through the federal health-insurance exchange were in the coveted under-35 demographic, Mr. Obama said. The participation of younger, relatively healthy people is needed to balance out the cost of medical claims from older and sicker ones.
The announcement contained few other new details about enrollment. Republicans quickly pointed to missing information—such as the number of people who had actually gained coverage after being uninsured, as opposed to those replacing an existing policy—to suggest the figures could be overblown as a measure of success.’
‘GOP lawmakers continued to emphasize information not contained in the numbers, including how many people have paid their first month's premium, the final step in enrolling for insurance.
"How many of those who have signed up were among the millions who had their plans canceled? How many were already insured but forced to sign up for an Obamacare plan?" said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.). "This law promised to insure the uninsured, let those who liked their insurance keep it, and lower the cost of insurance—let's talk about what the law was supposed to do instead of how many millions of people the president has so far forced into Obamacare."‘
‘The president's announcement didn't include state-by-state information about enrollment, which will be key to determining premiums for 2015 and beyond since each state's insurance market is different and rates are based on the makeup of people who sign up within each.
White House officials said Thursday that 28% of the enrollees in the federally run exchanges serving 36 states are in the 18-34 demographic. Some 7% are children covered by family plans. The administration didn't release demographic information for the 14 states running their own exchanges.
Insurance officials previously said 80% to 85% of enrollees paid the first month's premium, a proportion that would suggest the administration will ultimately hit enrollment targets for the exchanges for 2014 even if some people drop out or have picked more than one plan and are overrepresented in the numbers, especially since some people who have a change in their life circumstances such as a divorce or job loss are still allowed to sign up after March 31.
The figures represent a slight increase in young people compared with the previous five months. The administration said earlier that through Feb. 28, about 4.2 million people were covered by plans picked via the federal and state-run exchanges. Of those, 25% were 18 to 34, and 6% were children covered by family plans.
The mix of younger people buying coverage is considered by health plans to be crucial in determining future insurance prices. Under the law, insurers no longer can charge premiums based on health histories, and are restricted in how much more they can charge older consumers.’ (1)
Those Pesky Math Problems
‘You can't manage what you don't measure, as the great Peter Drucker used to say, and for the White House that seems to be the goal. Out of the blue, the Census Bureau has changed how it counts health insurance—at the precise moment when ObamaCare is roiling the insurance markets.
Since 1987, the Current Population Survey, or CPS, has collected information on the health-insurance coverage status of Americans. The annual reports are widely cited because their large sample sizes improve accuracy, the data are gathered constantly, and they tease out state-by-state details. But this year the Census revamped the CPS household insurance questions, muddying comparisons between the pre- and post-ObamaCare numbers. The results of the new method will be disclosed this fall.
The FDA would never approve a new drug whose maker completely changed the clinical trial protocol in the middle of the experiment, yet that is what the White House has done. How many people gained or lost insurance under ObamaCare? Did government crowd out individual insurance? What about employer-sponsored insurance? It will be much harder and in some cases impossible to know.
Robert Pear of the New York Times obtained internal Census documents that note that the new CPS system produces lower estimates of the uninsured as an artifact of how the questionnaire is structured. One memo refers to the "coincidental and unfortunate timing" and that, "Ideally, the redesign would have had at least a few years to gather base line and trend data."‘ (2)
Those Pesky Math Problems Part Deux
‘The White House and its media phalanx are claiming the Census Bureau fracas is nothing more than a search for a conspiracy where none exists. Yet revising its health insurance survey design will make it harder to measure ObamaCare's performance over time, and now we've learned that the choice to do so is even worse than we first wrote.
The White House is right that the new questions have been in the works since the Bush Administration, and the Current Population Survey (CPS) revisions are said to produce better estimates of how many people lack coverage. The problem is that resetting the insurance CPS in this year of major insurance disruption means that the old data series can't be compared to the new one going forward. It's a statistical break that prevents researchers from identifying before-and-after trends with precision and validity.
It would have been less disruptive to either delay the update or else to run the old and new CPS in parallel for a few years. As we wrote Wednesday, the second option would preserve the value of three decades of old information, while still producing more accurate statistics going forward.
We've since learned that this hybrid method is precisely what the Census Bureau proposed to do for its data collection about income and poverty in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, or ASEC. Census announced this change at the same time it proposed the new health insurance questions in the Federal Register in September 2013.
Let the Census explain: "The ASEC 2014 data collection instrument will have a split-design structure, with two separate treatments for the income-related section. . . . Five-eighths (5/8) of the sample will have income questions from the 'traditional' design, while three-eighths (3/8) will have income questions from the 'redesigned' ASEC. This split-design will enable Census Bureau analysts to create a 'cross-walk' when analyzing the effects of the redesigned ASEC on income and poverty estimates."
So why not follow the same procedure for asking about health insurance, erring on the side of more information, not less? The new questions were road-tested in previous surveys in 2010 and 2013, though the CPS is viewed as reliable because it has produced a stable baseline for comparison for so long. Other surveys of insurance, both public and private like Gallup, are more volatile.’ (3)
Checking The Long Form Division
‘Barack Obama wasted little time last week declaring victory as the deadline for enrollment in Affordable Care Act exchanges expired – well, more or less, anyway. The White House celebrated as it announced that 7.1 million consumers had signed up for health insurance through the federal and state exchanges, slightly exceeding their original goals and significantly outpacing expectations after the disastrous rollout of Obamacare last October. “The debate over repealing this law is over,” President Obama told the press on April 1. “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”
Last week, that sounded like wishful thinking. Two new studies released this week prove it.
Before we get to these studies, though, we should recognize why we need outside organizations to validate White House claims in the first place. The Department of Health and Human Services still has no way to quantify important data about those consumers signing up for health insurance through state and federal exchanges.
More than six months after the initial rollout of Obamacare -- and four years after the ACA’s passage -- the systems designed by HHS still cannot determine basic and critical information about enrollments such as whether a premium payment has been made. Without a premium payment, a sign-up in the web portal does not mean coverage has been extended.
Furthermore, the systems were not designed to collect important demographic information such as pre-existing coverage, current health status, or even definite age ranges, even though the success of the Obamacare structure depends on getting previously uninsured healthy Americans locked into expensive comprehensive insurance.
Without the “young invincibles” providing new funding for risk pools that now have to cover older and less-healthy consumers under “community pricing” restrictions, premiums will escalate rapidly, forcing more consumers out of the system and triggering the dreaded “death spiral” for insurers.
In order to determine the scope of the celebration, then, we need outside surveys to give us an idea of the size and composition of the actual enrollment population in Obamacare. The first of the independent studies comes from the RAND Corporation, which studied the changes in the health insurance market between September 2013 – just before the rollout of the state exchanges – and the end of the open-enrollment period at the end of last month.
While the White House can claim credit for a net increase of 9.3 million insured and a lowered uninsured rate from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent, the data provides a significantly different picture than that painted by President Obama and the ACA’s advocates.
First, a significant amount of this increase comes from Medicaid enrollments, not private insurance. Almost six million people enrolled in Medicaid, and earlier studies showed that a relatively small number of those came from the expansion built into the ACA; most of these would have been Medicaid-eligible prior to the reform.
Another 8.2 million more people enrolled in employer-provided health care, as 7.1 million left the “other” category and another 1.6 million left the individual insurance markets. Only 3.9 million actually enrolled in insurance plans through state or federal exchanges – not 7.1 million as claimed by Obama. That number falls far short of even the lowered expectations issued by HHS and the White House earlier this year.’ (4)
McMath?
‘Today President Obama announced that as of April 15, 8 million people have enrolled in the insurance exchanges set up by Obamacare. But that’s not all. According to a White House fact sheet:
3 million young adults stayed on their parents plan,
3 million more people had enrolled in Medicaid, with more on the way, and
5 million people enrolled in plans outside the insurance exchanges.
The news was so good that even Republicans should, in the president’s words, admit that the Affordable Care Act is working.
Maybe not. What the administration has not told us is how many of those 19 million people already had coverage and lost it because of the Affordable Care Act. Or how many of them would have been covered by insurance this year and changed plans to get a big subsidy. Or how many of them thought they were going to get a better health plan but found out that their doctor is not in the network. Or how many of them spent more on insurance than they felt they could afford because there were no lower-cost alternatives. Or how many will find out that the taxpayer subsidy they are receiving will turn out to be too high—they might get a raise in a few months or work some overtime and will make a little too much money this year, or it might just be that the government’s computers didn’t get it right—and will have to repay the Treasury hundreds and perhaps thousands of dollars?’ (5)
Notes:
(1) Obama Says Health-Insurance Enrollees Reach 8 Million, President Criticizes GOP, Saying 'Repeal Debate Is and Should Be Over' - WSJ, 04/17/2014
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304810904579507922881089460?KEYWORDS=OBAMA+HEALTH+CARE+TALK&mg=reno64-wsj
(2) Cooking the ObamaCare Stats, Suddenly, the Census Bureau changes how it counts insurance - WSJ, 04/16/2014
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303663604579503652766287652?KEYWORDS=obamacare&mg=reno64-wsj
(3) None Dare Blame ObamaCare, The Census Bureau's statistical changes are worse than we thought - WSJ, 04/17/2014
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303626804579507820306300440?KEYWORDS=obamacare&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303626804579507820306300440.html%3FKEYWORDS%3Dobamacare&cb=logged0.8406738588705886
(4) Two New Studies Raise Red Flags on Obamacare, The Fiscal Times, 04/10/2014
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/04/10/Two-Studies-Raise-Red-Flags-Obamacare-s-First-Round
(5) Lots of sign-ups for Obamacare — and almost as many questions, American Enterprise Institute, 04/17/2014
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/lots-of-sign-ups-for-obamacare-and-almost-as-many-questions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aei-ideas%2Fposts+%28AEIdeas+Posts%29
Consider for a moment the following mantra regarding pre-existing conditions:
(1) Obamacare/ACA proponents put forth that their scheme is grand and great as it takes all comers as it includes/accepts even those with pre-existing conditions,
(2) that somehow and in some way people where cancelled by insurers, in the past, due to pre-existing conditions which becomes the vilification of insurers for such practice,
(3) hence you can then acquire health insurance and never be cancelled due to pre-existing conditions.
Nice and tidy argument huh? Maybe not so much.
For a moment consider the above mantra as exactly correct (which it is not and discussed below). Now consider the above mantra again with the following in mind:
(1) if one had acquired health insurance in the past and consequently a condition manifested itself which would qualify as a pre-existing condition,
(2) yet one’s policy was cancelled or will soon be cancelled because it did not/does not conform to Obamacare/ACA guidelines,
(3) then the same group of ACA proponents have advocated and initiated, through legislation, insurers cancelling policies with pre-exiting conditions.
Oops!
If you examine the ACA proponents argument regarding insurers cancelling policies due to pre-existing conditions one actually finds the facts and mantra don’t jive. How so? The mantra is based on “rescissions”. An insurer rescission of coverage, generally speaking, is when an applicant did not divulge a pre-existing condition on the initial application then seeks treatment soon after the policy went into force for the pre-existing condition. The policy is rescinded and premium is returned to the insured [rescission].
Exactly how widespread was this "rescissions" process? One hundred thousand rescissions per year? Half a million rescissions per year? Millions? If you no longer have to worry about losing your health insurance because you are sick, and this is a major talking point regarding Obamacare, then the phenomena had to be affecting a major portion of the population. Right?
Wrong. Sorry, it’s yet another Obamacare riddle.
"According to a congressional report, there were actually fewer than 5,000 rescissions per year, and at least some of those were actual cases of fraud...." (1) (2)
Coming full circle, considering fewer than 5,000 rescissions per year supporting the mantra regarding pre-existing conditions and further considering the approximately 135,000 signing up for Obamacare directed risk pools: Is the total number of rescissions and risk pool applicants smaller than or greater than the 4.2 million policies cancelled by ACA advocates considering the subsection of the 4.2 million policies (so far) which indeed have acquired pre-existing conditions? (3) (4)
Who cancelled who?
Notes:
(1) Bad Medicine, Cato Institute, M.D. Tanner, page 7
(2) http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090616/rescission_supplemental.pdf
(3) Funds run low for health insurance in state ‘high-risk pools’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2013/02/15/cb9d56ac-779c-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html?hpid=z1
(4) New Numbers: 4.2M Americans Dropped From Health Plans, foxnewsinsider.com
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/11/07/how-many-americans-have-lost-their-health-insurance-under-obamacare
‘At the height of controversy surrounding President Obama’s promises on the federal health care overhaul, U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s office worked assiduously to revise press accounts that 249,000 Coloradans received health care cancellation notices. Because the 249,000 figure was produced inside the Colorado Division of Insurance, Udall’s office lobbied that agency to revise the figure, or revise their definition of what qualified as a cancellation.’
‘Worth noting is the fact the original media reports of 249,000 cancellations in the state happened on or about November 6. The dispute between Udall’s office and the Department of Insurance didn’t happen more than a week later on November 14. Specifically, the issue didn’t appear to rise to importance for the Udall office until President Obama decreed citizens could keep cancelled plans.
At the time of President Obama’s decree on November 13, Senator Udall was proposing legislation that would have created a legal framework whereby citizens with cancelled plans could keep said plans for an additional two years.
In yet another email, Udall staffer Joe Britton gives away the extent to which Udall’s office was seeking complicit messaging from the Division of Insurance. ”We need to move on this ASAP – or we’ll be forced to challenge the 249K number ourselves. It is wildly off or at least very misleading and reporters keep repeating it.” Eventually, Udall’s office did take the task upon themselves, successfully garnering a telling of their story in The Denver Post with an online publishing timestamped 4:57 PM MST, November 15. Donlin later alerted several of her colleagues in the Division of Insurance about the online story, saying, “Here’s a link to [Denver Post reporter] Mike Booth’s latest article quoting ‘Sen. Udall staff.’ The online comments are very interesting.”’ - Udall’s office pushed back hard on number of health care cancellations, completecolorado.com, 01/09/2014
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://completecolorado.com/pagetwo/2014/01/09/udalls-office-pushed-back-hard-on-number-of-health-care-cancellations/
'Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.
But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.
“I couldn’t sleep because of it,” said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.
Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.
Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.
The people affected include not just writers, artists, doctors and the like, but also independent tradespeople, like home builders or carpenters, who work on their own.' - With Affordable Care Act, Canceled Policies for New York Professionals, NYT, 12/13/2013
Link to entire article appears below:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/nyregion/with-affordable-care-act-canceled-policies-for-new-york-professionals.html?smid=pl-share
“How anxious is the Obama administration about the health care law’s effects on insurance coverage? For the last few days, speculation has increased about the possibility that the law could actually result in a net loss of coverage at the beginning of next year—with more people losing existing insurance as a result of cancellations than have signed up for new insurance plans under the law. An announcement this afternoon strongly suggests that the administration is more than a little bit concerned about this possibility as well.
The Department of Health and Human Services said this afternoon that it will extend coverage options for individuals currently enrolled in the law’s temporary high-risk pool program through the end of January, instead of allowing the program to end on December 31 as originally planned. It will also require private insurers selling policies in the law's insurance exchanges to accept payment up until December 31 of this year for coverage than begins January 1.
In addition, HHS said it would “strongly encourage” insurers to take other "transitional" steps over the next month as well—steps like accepting partial pre-payment for coverage that begins on January 1 as a “down payment” in lieu of full payment prior to the start of coverage and allowing people who sign up after the December 23 deadline to begin coverage on January 1. HHS also said it hoped insurers would accept out of network providers as in-network for “acute episodes” or in cases in which a provider was listed in an insurer’s enrollment directory but dropped out after an individual’s enrollment date.
On an afternoon conference call about the changes, the administration even suggested that insurers should consider accepting as enrolled anyone who has signed up for a plan by December 23—even if the person in question has not paid the first month’s premium at all. Payments could be made after January 1, and after coverage kicked in.” - White House In Obamacare Panic Mode? Administration Announces Steps to Maintain Insurance Coverage As Worries About Disruptions Mount, reason.com, 12/12/2013
Link to entire article appears below:
http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/12/white-house-in-obamacare-panic-mode-admi
Update: Trainwreck: White House Issues More Frantic Obamacare Deadline Extensions, townhall.com, 12/13/2013
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/12/13/industry-expert-no-healthcaregov-isnt-fixed-n1762127?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
“The problem is that so-called back end systems, which are supposed to deliver consumer information to insurers, still have not been fixed. And with coverage for many people scheduled to begin in just 30 days, insurers are worried the repairs may not be completed in time.
“Until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” said Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.
The issues are vexing and complex. Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment. Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete, so they had to track down additional data — a laborious task that would not be feasible if data is missing for tens of thousands of consumers.
In still other cases, insurers said, they have not been told how much of a customer’s premium will be subsidized by the government, so they do not know how much to charge the policyholder.” - Insurers Claim Health Website Is Still Flawed, NYT, 12/02/2013
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/business/white-house-praises-gains-on-health-site.html?_r=0
Update:
Despite Website Fixes, Fears Grow that Obamacare Numbers Don't Add Up, newsmax, 12/02/2013
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obamacare-signup-numbers-young/2013/12/01/id/539356?ns_mail_uid=62439580&ns_mail_job=1548245_12022013&promo_code=15C7F-1
"A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking time bomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancellations next fall -- right before the mid-term elections.
The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader.
An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the administration anticipates half to two-thirds of small businesses would have policies canceled or be compelled to send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. They predict up to 100 million small and large business policies could be canceled next year." - Second wave of health plan cancellations looms, Foxnews.com, 11/20/2013
Link to entire article appears below:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/20/second-wave-health-plan-cancellations-looms/
“Thirty-nine House Democrats on Friday broke ranks to support a Republican bill that would allow health insurers to continue selling plans canceled under Obamacare through 2014, the first test of support on Capitol Hill since the law’s disastrous rollout.
The House voted, 261-157, to pass the bill by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.). It’s a significant show of disloyalty to the White House, but House Democrats had expected the defections to be far higher before the Obama administration said Thursday that it would pursue an administrative fix to the cancellation problem.
Obama’s White House vowed to veto the bill, saying it “threatens the health security of hard working, middle class families.” The bill is headed nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, where a number of Senate Democrats have also proposed their own changes to the health care law.” - With 39 Dems behind it, House passes Obamacare fix, politico.com, 11/15/2013
Link to the entire story appears below:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/democrats-obamacare-vote-99915.html
WASHINGTON — Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced changes to his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled.
The administrative changes are good for just one year, though senior administration officials said they could be extended if problems with the law persist. Obama announced the changes at the White House.
"This fix won't solve every problem for every person, but it's going to help a lot of people," the president said.’
‘It's unclear what the impact of Thursday's changes will be for the millions of people who have already had their plans canceled. While officials said insurance companies will now be able to offer those people the option to renew their old plans, companies are not required to take that step.
Insurance companies will be required to inform consumers who want to keep canceled plans about the protections that are not included under those plans. Customers will also be notified that new options are available offering more coverage and in some cases, tax credits to cover higher premiums.
Under Obama's plan, insurance companies would not be allowed to sell coverage deemed subpar under the law to new customers, marking a difference with legislation that House Republicans intend to put to a vote on Friday.
Only last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Senate panel she doubted that retroactively permitting insurers to sell canceled policies "can work very well since companies are now in the market with an array of new plans. Many have actually added consumer protections in the last three-and-a-half years." ‘ - Policy cancellations: Obama will allow old plans, msn.com, AP, 11/14/2013
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://news.msn.com/us/policy-cancellations-obama-will-allow-old-plans
"There's a problem, that "a small percentage of folks" (8-10 million people) are facing canceled individual market health insurance plans, and some of them are "disadvantaged" by the new options, or will be once they can see them on a functioning healthcare.gov. The President has directed his team to consider some administrative solutions to fix the problem, to "address some of those gaps."
The problem with the President's public statement is that he has now frozen the individual insurance market in place until he announces his new solutions. If you are one of the 8-10 million Americans with a canceled insurance policy, President Obama just created an enormous incentive for you to hold off on buying a new policy, to wait for the Administration to offer you a new solution.
Had they announced a new solution today, they would not have created this problem. The disincentive to buy a new plan comes from offering hope of a better outcome with no specificity or timeframe.
This new disincentive to buy insurance applies nationwide and is independent of the broken federal exchange website. I expect states running their own exchanges like California and Colorado, Minnesota and Maryland, DC, New York, and Connecticut, will see their new enrollments now drop as those with canceled policies wait for the President's next move. States participating in the federal exchange won't see any drop because the broken website is already preventing signups. Still, even in those states the President has created a new reason not to buy insurance on the exchange when it eventually does work, at least until he announces his new policy.
Because the story is so hot, and because the President's allies in Congress are desperate to offer their angry constituents some hope, we can be assured that the President's ambiguous offer of future hope, and the purchasing disincentive it creates, will get a lot of attention.
The optimistic interpretation for this new policy signal is that President Obama and his team understood this balance when the President spoke yesterday, that they weighed the cost of further discouraging new signups against the benefit of partially relieving growing pressure to help angry citizens who liked their canceled policies.” - Another Unforced Error, Keith Hennessey, 11/08/2013
Link to the entire blog post appears below:
http://keithhennessey.com/2013/11/08/individual-market-freeze/
Upset at your recent health insurance cancellation notice? You can now post your health insurance cancellation letter on the web site MyCancellation.com.
They have accumulated quite the list of letters! Apparently you are not alone.
Link to the web site is: http://mycancellation.com/ The e-mail to send your cancellation letter to is: letters@mycancellation.com .
“Nancy Pelosi waxed rhapsodic in 2010 as she imagined the benefits of Obamacare: “Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
Well, that was the economy we used to have. But as Obamacare begins to kick in, artists, photographers, writers, and other members of the “creative class” who have access to health insurance programs through numerous professional organizations will lose that coverage.
Up until now professional organizations have worked with insurance providers to craft reduced-rate plans for their members. But thanks to the fine print in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), on January 1, 2014, many of these plans will fail to pass legal muster.
The College Art Association website posted a notice this month: “The New York Life Insurance Company recently informed CAA that it will no longer offer catastrophic healthcare coverage previously available to CAA members.” Why? Because it “is no longer an option” for “associations whose members reside in different states” to provide such coverage. These members will have to seek help from their home states’ newly formed Obamacare exchanges. Plans offered to Modern Language Association (MLA) members will suffer a similar fate.
Other insurance providers are reporting cancellations. The Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust (TEIGIT) website posts the following notice: “All individual and/or Sole Proprietor Health Insurance will terminate January 1, 2014. This includes plans acquired as Members of our Affiliated Associations & their groups.” Those affiliated associations include the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Dramatists Guild, the Graphic Arts Guild, NY Women in Film and Television, and many others.” - Creative Destruction, Obamacare versus artists, writers, musicians, actors, et al., 09/09/2013, The Weekly Standard
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/creative-destruction_751425.html
