Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Dawn Breaks at NBC

You don't say:
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”  

NBC has discovered even more:
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
NSFW and significantly more accurate than any Obama claim:


Coming soon to an investigative unit near you: a walkback of this breathless dispatch, in which "PolitiFact" made a bold claim, and potentially this later dispatch from the same objective seekers of truth, which is, to use a term from a previous administration known and loved to millions, "no longer operative." No apology will be forthcoming.

4 comments:

3john2 said...

It's morning in America.

Bike Bubba said...

It's mourning in America.

Anonymous said...

There are those who would say that Obama has lied, but others will say that he didn't lie because he had no knowledge of the studies. I guess that either means he is liar or an incompetent. In either instance is this the best that we can have representing our interests?

Mr. D said...

In either instance is this the best that we can have representing our interests?

Your mistake, anon, is assuming that anyone in government is actually in it to represent our interests.