In some cases, maybe. But in the news stories I’ve read, the cancellation notices are combined with offers of “equivalent” (read, better and more costly) plans that are hundreds or thousands of dollars more. And then to deal with the sticker shock, they’re told to go shop on the exchanges that… don’t work. It’s a terrible position for them to be in. Again, your casual dismissal of real problems is not helpful.
Ah, the old “the lie was justified because it makes things better for people defense”? :rolleyes:
Lower premiums, no. Better coverage? Depends. Getting rid of lifetime limits does make coverage better. Forcing maternity and contraceptive coverage on people who don’t need it does not improve their health care in the slightest. Then there’s all the things insurance companies have to cover for free now which don’t really need to be free, but do push premiums up.
His promise was absolute. Non-compliant ACA plans are mostly not grandfathered, and that was a choice he made. He chose to break his promise.
I think the issue here is about people (like me) who buy thei own insurance are getting jacked in order to subsidize everyone else. This has been repoted all along and we’re just seeing part of that now.
It depends on what the “real problem” is, doesn’t it? If it’s the rock and a hard place that many people now find themselves in, then you’re right. But if you define the problem as “Oh, shit. This is going to make Obama look bad! And that CAN"T happen!!”, then handwaving and hairsplitting seem to be the best one can do.
There are a lot of alarmist news stories, and not all of them have been accurate. If you could dig up some of the ones you’ve seen, that might be helpful. Edit: I don’t mean to imply “the news stories are all full of shit and so are you.” I just mean that some stories are more legit than others.
It doesn’t only effect the cheapest, low coverage plans. I’ve seen companies removing the top tier plans because they were too good for the price.
What kind of crazy world is this where I’m in agreement with Terr and adaher?
I know for a fact that every health insurance policy I’ve ever had makes some changes year-by-year. Coverage on some things got a little better, on other things got a little worse. But I still considered each of those plans to be “my health insurance plan,” because my premiums still went to the same insurance company, I still saw the same doctors, still had the same insurance card, I still used the same procedures for booking appointments, etc.
When my insurance company evolved its policies over the years to something I no longer liked, I got a new plan. But, in this case, it seems that rather routine changes are being viewed by the government as a means to come between what are probably pretty cordial relations between a business and a customer. That isn’t what the President promised.
Frankly, the idea that an insurance company must keep its policies totally unchanged since 2010 in order to be grandfathered in seems like a pretty bad deal for the consumer, too. If a person is generally satisfied with their health plan, and they and their employer are paying the bills, why should they be locked into having a vintage 2010 health plan for the indefinite future with no de minimis changes being allowed?
Clearly, the regulations should give consumers the greatest deference in whether to keep their plans or not, which is what Obama promised. Changes in the window dressing of a plan should not mean that someone has to shop for another insurance policy.
Here’s one I linked to last week. There’s only one example of someone stating what their “replacement” plan was going to cost, but it’s typical of other stories I’ve seen. I wouldn’t describe that article as alarmist by any means.
eta: Here’s a new one.
That runs against the main liberal principle. Namely: “The government knows better than you what’s good for you.”
No one should be surprised by this revelation. This was the intent of the law to begin with: To remove the freedom of choice on the individual healthcare front. To force everyone to become insured at a certain level. So that those that are generally healthy will subsidize those that are unhealthy.
I expect that the trend of the bifurcated premiums (one set of cheaper premiums for non-smokers and another set of higher premiums for smokers) will be outlawed within the next few years, as it does not economically allow for a proper subsidy for smokers.
that’s what the mandates are all about. Preventive care has to be free. Why? Why not make broken legs free? Why not make everything free, or require copayments for everything?
The decisions made were arbitrary and/or politically motivated, and the result is that the plans have high premiums, high deductibles, with some stuff free and some stuff you have to pay full freight for.
THe proper tradeoff should be between premiums and deductibles. You pay a lower premium for a higher deductible, or you pay a higher premium for a lower deductible. ACA gives customers the worst of both worlds. Unless their whole reason for buying insurance is family planning.
That’s kind of the point of insurance. Those of us without house fires subsidize the people whose houses burn down.
Medicare for all would be a better solution, but the insurance companies are loving Obamacare.
And now we’re back to the patent BS that we’ve all come to expect, in which your posts spend more time bashing libr’uls than making reasoned arguments about things in the news.
OK, so, I dunno. I read that story that steronz just linked to, and I read the story in the OP, etc. And I’m still not really seeing where this is Obama’s fault. I mean, I guess he shouldn’t have said, “You can keep your insurance plan,” because apparently that made people think that he, or the government, was providing some sort of guarantee that your insurance plan wasn’t going to go anywhere. But how could he possibly do that? I guess people thought that the ACA had some kind of language about grandfathering old plans in. I didn’t think that, and the fact that insurance companies are changing/canceling policies en masse doesn’t really surprise me at all. They’re looking out for the bottom line, and any time there are a lot of new regulations, policies are going to change – probably for the worse/more expensive, since that’s how the insurance biz works.
When Obama said “you can keep your insurance policy,” I thought it was very clear that it meant, “The government isn’t going to be canceling policies or forcing anyone onto some kind of public exchange,” and not, “We are forcing insurance companies to continue offering your current policy as-is for an indefinite time.” Obviously a lot of people understood his statement differently, so that’s a big mistake on his part. But I don’t think it’s a flaw with the ACA per se.
The main solution right now, IMO, is to get the public exchanges up and running smoothly ASAP. Particularly for people in states whose governors have opted not to provide any infrastructure or support.
For the record, I experienced technical flaws that kept me from logging in to the Healthcare.gov site the first couple times I tried, right after they opened up. I tried again a few days ago and it worked perfectly.
My insurance plan covers 100% of pregnancy related medical bills. I’m not getting pregnant, ever. Seems like my insurance provider made an arbitrary and/or politically motivated decision, and the result is that I have higher premiums, higher deductibles, with some stuff free that I will never use and some stuff that I will have to pay full freight for.
Won’t you join me in my outrage against my insurance company?
What makes you think the average American is knowledgeable enough to make truly intelligent decisions about health coverage?
I once applied for a job at a company that bragged they offered health insurance even to their temp employees. The guy really thought it was a kick-ass plan. Actually, it was shit. Significant deductible ($500 - keep reading and compare to the benefit cap), lots of exclusions, and an annual benefit cap of $3,000. That’s not a typo, I really did say three thousand dollars. That ain’t shit. That probably won’t cover a single emergency room visit. A policy like that might be affordable in regards to premium but actually it’s a rip-off because it’s damn near useless.
Something that egregious was eliminated some year ago, there are no longer such stringent caps, but there are still plenty of health plans that are basically rip-offs and near useless if you actually get sick or injured and I’m glad to see such things eliminated no matter how much people whine about it.
There are, however, people who ARE qualified to do just that. I would hope that at least a few of them have been hired to work on this mess. Regardless, just because I can’t do something I don’t assume no one else can.
What state do you live in and is that coverage required by that state’s laws?
A lot of the stuff in Obamacare federalizes things that many states already require.
This may be true, but the system it is replacing is a system in which you were subsidizing “everyone else” because “everyone else” was using the ER for their healthcare, and then not paying. Right now we pay for that through taxes. We pay higher interest rates when people declare bankruptcy because of medical bills. We pay when a neighbor goes through a foreclosure and the value of our house drops. We pay when people lose their job because of a preventable medical problem. Under the old system we pay, and pay, and pay, and what do we get? A shitty healthcare system where a huge number of people have horrible outcomes at twice the price of better healthcare systems in other countries.
So, under Obamacare, yes, you are going to have to pay. And pay and pay and pay. The point is that if it works, it should cost responsible people like you less in the long run, and improve outcomes across the board. I’ve never understood why smart people like you don’t get this. You’ve always been paying for these people. Why is it so disturbing now? If you’re going to be paying for them anyway (unless you advocate turning dying people away from ERs) why wouldn’t you want to go with the better, cheaper option?
Considering that he and his party decided to force people to buy Big Insurance’s product, no matter how shit it is, that’s a pretty damning mistake.