The proposal made by the President today to allow you to keep your insurance will turn out to be just another one of his lies. It is impractical and impossible to accomplish. The end game will be that Obama will include in all of his speeches that he allowed the insurance companies to keep the plans that had in 2013 but they just did not want to cooperate. He will say "it's not my fault your insurance got cancelled, it is your insurance company. I did everything I could but these greedy companies would not go along."
There are a number of reasons that the Obama approach will not work for the majority of Americans who have had their policies cancelled by ObamaCrapCare. First of all, for the insurance companies to comply with the Obama edict, they must send a letter to each cancelled person detailing the differences between their plan and the plan(s) available on the ObamaCrapCare website.
Secondly and before this letter can be sent, each cancelled plan must be priced for the upcoming year. Not only has the company not calculated the rates (there was no need to determine 2014 rates as the plan supposedly was not going to be available) but they also must have them "blessed" by the state insurance commissioner in the state in which the policy would be sold. Additionally, if a company sells in a number of states each state commissioner would have to approve those rates.
After the rates have been calculated and the commissioners have approved them, the company can send out the letter. Normally rate calculations and their approval take more than a month to accomplish. If the companies started today, being able to effectively communicate those prices and producing the letter in a couple months would be a push but we only have 90 days and many involve the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
If the insurance company actually got the letter done by December 15, the customer would have to review the material in the letter and send some sort of confirmation that he/she wanted to keep his old policy or move to a new one. Do you really want to be making those decisions during the Christmas holidays?
The third and final reason this plan will not work is that it is ILLEGAL. A President cannot waive a part of the law (although Obama already has as in the case of the employer mandate) without Congressional approval.
Now that the President has spoken has the energy to allow you to keep your policy evaporated? We think so. However, if that is not the case, how long will it take for Congress to write the bill, have it debated and passed? At best it would be a couple days which will further delay the insurance companies who before they can act. They also must understand how the letter must be worded and other requirements that surely will arise if Congress gets in the act.
The short and long of it is, Obama's move is not to help those with cancelled insurance policies but is intended to remove the onus from his Administration and place it directly on the backs of the insurance carriers. There might be some small carriers who will be able to comply with the new Obama mandate but for the majority of companies, the task is too complex and the time too limited to do it effectively.
Next year, the Democrats will characterize the insurance companies as unfeeling behemoths who don't care for the people they insure. After all THEY did not allow you to keep your insurance and the Administration who "did everything in their power" to stop the cancellations. They will have effectively turned around the faulty website issue.
Could they win in 2014 with this strategy, very possible. Could they get both Houses, potentially.
This is NOT a great day. It is a sad day for all freedom loving Americans.
Conservative Tom
OBAMA TO ALLOW YOU TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH PLAN, BUT ALSO REQUIRE INSURANCE COMPANIES TO SAY OBAMACARE COULD BE A BETTER DEAL
We will be discussing this story and all the day’s news on our live BlazeCast with Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker (@bakerlink) beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET:
Preempting a House vote on Obamacare that would allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced a new administration policy to allow most people keep their current plans. But the new policy will also require insurance companies to inform customers they might have a better deal from the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
“There is no doubt the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate,” Obama told reporters. “It was not my intention not to deliver on that promise. We put a grandfather clause in the law but that was insufficient.”
The administration initiative, a one-year fix, will allow the 2013 plans to be grandfathered in, but with two caveats, according to White House senior officials.
The first caveat requires insurance companies to inform consumers of what their plans do not include. This would include whether existing plans don’t cover things such as maternity care or contain annual or lifetime limits. The second requires the insurance companies to inform consumers what they could get on the Obamacare marketplace, that they could qualify for tax credits or qualify for Medicaid.
The policy is almost voluntary. It will still be at the discretion of the insurance companies whether to restart plans that have already been canceled as a result of the health care law. White House officials said they reserve the right to take another look at the matter in a year. Further, it will be up to state insurance officials whether to allow plans to be sold in their state that do not comply with Obamacare.
This is consistent with the administration’s theme of characterizing most of the existing plans on the individual market “substandard,” compared to the plans that are being offered on the health care exchange.
Obama pledged on at least 36 occasions – 10 of those times after signing the Affordable Care Act into law – that anyone who liked their current health insurance plan could keep it. That turned out not to be the case as millions of people have gotten or are getting cancellations letters for their insurance as a result of Obamacare regulations.
After first trying to explain that he didn’t mean precisely what he said, Obama was called out by non-partisan fact checkers. He gave a partial apology last week during an interview with NBC News for misleading the American people on the matter.
A Quinnipiac University poll found that 52 percent of the public does not believe Obama is honest and trustworthy, the lowest rating in his presidency. This comes as most polls show his job approval rating at or below 40 percent.
Obama called the pending House legislation a “brazen attempt” to do away with the Affordable Care Act and return to a “broken system.”
The House was set to vote Friday on a proposal supporters said would keep the president’s promise by allowing all Americans to keep their existing insurance plan. The legislation is sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The bill, like similar Senate legislation, appeared likely to receive substantial support from Democrats if Obama did not present his own plan.
White House officials said the Upton bill would allow 2013 policies, or pre-Obamacare marketplace plans – to be sold in 2014. This, officials said, would undermine the entire health care law.
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