Right-wing rag points out that Obama lied to the nation

[Adam]

Behold, the bastion of right-wing extremism.

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Obamacare rollout is leading to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of health insurance plans nationwide, contradicting President Barack Obama’s repeated pledge that people who like their coverage can keep it.

The notices started to arrive in recent weeks, compounding the political headaches for the White House from the troubled start of its health exchange, the federal website created to give millions of people access to new plans by Jan. 1.

[....]

Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield, for instance, said about 300,000 members are affected while California’s Blue Shield and Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente will withdraw policies for a combined 280,000. Highmark Health Services of Pittsburgh said 40,000 customers will need to find new plans. CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield sent notices to more than 70,000 customers in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia that their current plans don’t comply with the law.

Millions and millions of families will be getting these. I had heard an estimate last week of between fifteen and twenty million families in the US will be getting these, and this article cites nineteen million people, though it doesn't seem to differentiate that with families (e.g. a father who gets insurance for the whole household under one plan). My "official" notice has not yet arrived, but I called some time ago and was told that my policy was going away because it's "substandard." I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do.


Thanks, Obama!

[Billy Jingo]

Plans bought before March 23, 2010, when the law known as Obamacare was enacted, can stay in effect under a “grandfather” clause.

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What does that mean?

[Adam]

Plans bought before March 23, 2010, when the law known as Obamacare was enacted, can stay in effect under a “grandfather” clause.

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What does that mean?

Not much, since most policies are written on one-year increments and that was nearly four years ago now. Presumably, some very large employers have multi-year contracts that may be "grandfathered," but that's going to be few and far between as far as most Americans go.

[Gingersnap]

Plans bought before March 23, 2010, when the law known as Obamacare was enacted, can stay in effect under a “grandfather” clause.

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What does that mean?

Nothing now. The "grandfather clause" only applies to plans that are never renegotiated. Since all plans have to be renegotiated to reflect price changes, changes due to new marriage laws (which means dropping live-in lover coverage in many cases), and expanded or contracted coverage areas, hospital networks, etc., there is no plan that qualifies aside for the hide-money-under-the-mattress plans.

Regardless of what the White House has said, even "grandfathered" plans must meet certain provisions outlined by the ACA which means in practicality that these plans are being withdrawn and then retooled - which means they aren't grandfathered anymore. Some estimate that 85% of potentially qualifying plans are being withdrawn because of this.

The Devil is in the details.

[Michele]

I chose to stay on my current plan that was "Grandfathered" in according to Anthem Blue Cross. In November 2012, I received a new benefits guide and a premium increase. My premium jumped from $526 to $712. I'm looking at my letter about being grandfathered in and why my rate jumped so much. This is what it says:

• Increase consumer demand for services
• Rising medical and prescription drug costs
• Advances in medical technology
• Changes in benefits and/or taxes required by state and federal law

It seems to me that if Obamacare spoke more to the need for health insurance reform and focused on people who didn't have medical insurance (30-40M) along with the people who were under-insured (another estimated 30-40M), instead of people who were happy with their insurance plan, there could have been an actual bill that really reformed our health care system instead of the disaster that we are now stuck with.

[gary m]

I chose to stay on my current plan that was "Grandfathered" in according to Anthem Blue Cross. In November 2012, I received a new benefits guide and a premium increase. My premium jumped from $526 to $712. I'm looking at my letter about being grandfathered in and why my rate jumped so much. This is what it says:

• Increase consumer demand for services
• Rising medical and prescription drug costs
• Advances in medical technology
• Changes in benefits and/or taxes required by state and federal law

It seems to me that if Obamacare spoke more to the need for health insurance reform and focused on people who didn't have medical insurance (30-40M) along with the people who were under-insured (another estimated 30-40M), instead of people who were happy with their insurance plan, there could have been an actual bill that really reformed our health care system instead of the disaster that we are now stuck with.

But then I would not be covered for a hysterectomy, pre and post natal care, or contraception and you would not be covered for vasectomies or prostate surgery.

[Michele]

But then I would not be covered for a hysterectomy, pre and post natal care, or contraception and you would not be covered for vasectomies or prostate surgery.

Well yeah..there's that.

Here's an article that has me a bit concerned:


6 ways a health care plan can lose its 'grandfathered' status under Obamacare

Millions of Americans in coming months will receive notices from their insurance companies saying that their policies must be cancelled due to changes brought about by President Obama's health care law.

At issue is that the law imposes a raft of new requirements on insurance policies, mandating that they offer a certain package of benefits deemed “essential,” regardless of whether consumers actually want to pay for those benefits.

As the legislation was making its way through Congress, Democrats added a provision allowing plans that wouldn’t otherwise meet Obamacare’s requirements to be “grandfathered” — meaning that they could still operate as long as they didn’t make certain changes.

With cancellation notices piling up and Obama under fire for violating his most memorable health care promise — that Americans could keep their current health plans if they liked them — the issue of what qualifies as a “grandfathered” plan is becoming a flashpoint.

Already, the Obama administration is trying to put the blame on insurance companies. Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote on Twitter on Monday, “FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.”

In reality, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued regulations limiting the changes that insurers could make after March 23, 2010 (the date Obamacare was signed into law) for plans to survive. Here are six types of changes that would strip a plan of its grandfathered status:

1. If a plan eliminates all or most benefits for diagnosing or treating a particular condition. For instance, to use an example mentioned by HHS, if a plan offered mental health coverage and treatment consisted of counseling and prescription drugs, eliminating counseling coverage would cause a plan to lose its grandfathered status. This is true even if only a small number of subscribers to the plan have the given condition.

2. If a plan alters the percentage that enrollees must pay toward their own medical expenses. For instance, if before March 23, 2010, a plan made its subscribers pay 10 percent of the cost of doctors’ visits, raising that amount to 11 percent would mean loss of grandfathered status.

3. If a plan alters the dollar amount its subscribers must pay toward their own medical expenses by either $5 (adjusted for medical inflation) or medical inflation plus 15 percent, whichever is greater. As an example, based on my calculations, if a plan charged consumers $10 for doctors' visits and upped the charge to $16 over the last three and a half years, it would no longer be grandfathered. (Medical inflation in the past few years has averaged about 3-4 percent.)

4. If the annual deductible or out-of-pocket limit were increased by more than medical inflation plus 15 percent. In other words, if somebody had a $400 deductible in March 2010, and it got raised above $500, that could trigger a loss in grandfathered status.

5. If the plan didn’t have lifetime or annual limits on medical claims as of March 2010, adding them would cause the plan to lose grandfathered status — so would adding an annual limit that exceeds the lifetime limit or decreasing the dollar value of the annual limit.

6. For employment-based health insurance, in addition to all of the above, a plan would lose its grandfathered status if the employer reduced its contribution by more than 5 percent. In other words, if in March 2010, an employer paid for 85 percent of its employees’ premiums, reducing that amount to less than 80 percent would trigger a loss in grandfathered status.

Once a plan loses grandfathered status, it is subject to all of the other regulations within Obamacare, which is why so many Americans are losing their current coverage.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now, I took a higher deductible (5K) to get my premium back down to $565 because we didn't really want to pay the jacked-up new rate. So will that change "trigger a loss in grandfathered status"? According to my insurance company, no. But according to this article, it might.

All I know is that I visit the doctor once a year and pay for everything myself because my deductible is so high. I use the health fair now to do my blood draw because I pay $120 as opposed to $520. My health insurance premium started at $326 in 2002 and every other year it went up a small, manageable amount. It wasn't until January 2011 that the rate started to jump over $100 each January. What a coincidence.

[Adam]

It turns out the Democrats knew this was coming all along, and just lied about it anyway.

[Gramps]

Waiting for the Jingo Defense...

Probably be a quip without any substance.

Been there, done that for 1+ (I voted for Obama, 2 times, but didn't know that he had no qualifications, the press ignored all the 'connections' and by gawd he was going to be the first minority President and after he trashed the economy, I couldn't admit that I fuccccccked up, because, I'm neutral)..

"But I'm good with all that."

[Adam]

And now it turns out that the Obama administration knew from CGI that the site didn't work a month in advance, but plunged ahead anyway. In related news, Marilyn Tavenner knowingly and willingly committed perjury before Congress this afternoon.

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