But he was in control of how narrow or broad grandfathering could be. Given the uncategorical nature of his promise, the right thing to do would have been to interpret the law as broadly as possible to allow people to keep their insurance.
He’s already demonstrated willingness to alter the law to his preferences even when it wasn’t clear he had the authority to do so. In this case, he clearly had the authority to prevent this and chose not to.
Remind me how much authority the president has to draft legislation, order Congress to rewrite bills, or “alter the law to his preferences”.
What’s that you say? None whatsoever?
I thought as much.
I think the Republicans should shut down the government again. It worked out pretty great for them last time.
Though it pains me to say it, this is a very fair criticism of Obamacare.
Let me first say that calling Obama a liar because of his statement is over the top. If the “you get to keep your insurance” statement were to be a lie, one should show that Obama knew it was wrong when he said it, for which I don’t believe there’s any credible information. But I would certainly chalk this up as a promise not fulfilled.
The point raised earlier about how some insurance companies have changed the substance of their plans so significantly that they no longer qualified for grandfathering is, on the face, a decent point. However, if the President says that you get to keep your health care plan if you like it, why the fuck should the government insert itself between an insurance company and a customer to determine whether or not the customer should like the plan?
I’m all for having coverage standards for new plans. But let the customer decide if he/she continues to be satisfied with the plan that they are paying for.
It seems to me that the news story here should have been: Greedy health insurance companies pull another fast one to short-change customers on services while premiums continue to go up. Now the story is, the government decides that your health plan you thought you could keep no longer meets HHS regulation 13-239-A-Sigma-BS-6969-&#^$& subparagraph (a).
The government should echo the eloquent apology once uttered by Rick Perry, “Oops.”
People aren’t losing their insurance because of the law. People are losing their insurance because the insurance companies are changing their plans on them. No matter how broadly the grandfather clause of the law is interpreted, these people are still not keeping their old plans, because the insurance companies are no longer offering those plans. The only way to avoid this situation would be for the government to take over all of the insurance companies. Is that really what you want?
Actually, I think it is what the right wing wants. Near as I can tell, the root of most right wing objections to Obama is that they want a president who acts like an absolute dictator, and Obama isn’t doing that.
The entire point here is that the government hasn’t decided any such thing. It is the insurer taking the initiative to change their plan such that it is no longer the plan you had, and thus no longer qualifies for an exemption.
You may be correct, but it’s not what we were told, again and again and again.
he delayed the employer mandate. He’s extending the individual mandate deadline. Writing grandfathering regulations was completely under his discretion.
Except, as noted above, we were told this.
What people thought he was saying was, well, what he said about a bazillion times. We now see that he knew that many people would not be able to keep their plans, yet he found it helpful to outright lie countless times. There’s really no getting around that fact.
He is able to do those things because the legislation gives the Secretary of HHS the authority to do so. Nothing in the ACA empowers Obama to “write grandfathering legislations”.
But he did bother to tell the public. From the OP’s linked article:
So, long after the grandfather cutoff, and in full knowledge that the provisions of the ACA would necessarily cause huge numbers of people’s plans to be cancelled, he was still telling audiences that they’d be able to keep their insurance.
He told the public. And what he told them was wrong - and he knew it was wrong.
And there we get down to it - it doesn’t matter what Obama actually said, the only thing that matters is how Republicans can selectively interpret it to their advantage.
I continue to be amazed at the number of people who think we didn’t only elect Obama to be prez but also High Overlord of Insurance Companies Amalgamated.
From the quote in the OP:
Emphasis added.
Nothing in the ACA requires insurers to change their plans so that they’re no longer grandfathered.
To be fair, “You can keep your insurance plan unless your insurance company dicks you by canceling the plan you already had - now, nobody’s going to make them do this, but nobody ever made bank on insurance companies not being dicks” would have been more accurate but also perhaps less marketable.
They then went on to loosen those regulations, so that it would be even easier for plans to remain grandfathered.
Why should that be the story? If people didn’t like the plans, they didn’t need to keep them. But the problem is that lots of people do seem to like the plans they have and now they can’t keep them. Not sure why the companies are being greedy by offering people what they want.
The reason they can’t keep the plan is because the company is no longer offering that plan.