President Obama's remedy for dealing with the aftermath of his lie that Americans could keep their policies if they liked them is best described as a non-working fix. Here are the details:
1. The Obamacare statute has a so called "grandfather" clause which supposedly lets folks with insurance in place when the law was passed keep their policies. The statute did not precisely define which policies would meet the grandfather clause, but it instead left that up to the Department of Health and Human Services.
2. Within a few months after Obamacare was signed into law, Obama's Department of HHS issued regulations that defined which kinds of health insurance policies met the requirements of the "grandfather" clause. Those regulations came with estimates that over 90 million existing policies would have to be cancelled because they did not meet the requirements of the regulation. In other words, in the summer of 2010, the Obama administration took steps that would inevitably lead to the cancellation of just under 100 million policies across America as Obamacare rolled out. If there was ever any doubt earlier, from the date these regulations were published in 2010, everyone in Washington knew that any claim that Americans could keep their policies if they liked them was not true.
3. Just as expected, the effect of Obamacare and the regulations from HHS led to millions of cancellation notices going out across America in the last few months. The latest count puts the number of known cancellations at well over 5 million with many more in the works. This was not a surprise to the administration; it was exactly what Obama and the Obamacrats had planned to see occur.
4. As anger over Obama's lies has grown, the president has begun to backtrack to try to muddy the waters so as to confuse some folks about why the policy cancellations have been happening. Even so, Obama does not want those cancelled policies to be brought back; he wants everyone forced into the exchanges just as he had planned. That led to today's phony fix.
5. Under the move announced today by Obama, insurance companies will be free to sell old policies to people who currently have them so long as that move is approved by the Commissioner of Insurance of the state where the policy is sold. That sure sounds simple, but it is not. Selling a new insurance policy is not something that a company can do in a week or two. There is a lengthy process that normally takes between four and six months to complete in most states. That means that telling an insurance company that it will again be free to sell an old policy today means that it will be Spring before that policy could actually be sold. Even if some states expedite the process, there is almost no way that the policies will be in place by the first of the year.
6. On top of the time delays, there are company specific problems as well. For example, some insurance companies have pulled out of certain state markets because of all the restrictions of Obamacare. If a company was forced to cancel its policies in a state and decided that it was withdrawing from that state, it is now most likely too late for the company to change its operations so as to resume sales in that state moving forward.
7. There are also large pricing issues for these policies as well. Rather than writing another 1000 words on this point alone, suffice to say that the last minute change in the rules will not allow for the rational pricing of the surviving policies Obama is now trying to appear to resurrect.
The truth is this. Obama is trying to appear to let people keep their old policies. He is doing it in a way, however, that makes sure that just the opposite will happen. Millions upon millions will still lose their plans. Prices for insurance across America will rise by huge amounts. The government will get control over the healthcare market unlike it has ever had previously. The vast majority of middle income Americans will be squeezed so hard that they may lose their coverage. The Obamacare disaster will still hit the country hard. In short, this is a dishonest sham act by Obama.
1. The Obamacare statute has a so called "grandfather" clause which supposedly lets folks with insurance in place when the law was passed keep their policies. The statute did not precisely define which policies would meet the grandfather clause, but it instead left that up to the Department of Health and Human Services.
2. Within a few months after Obamacare was signed into law, Obama's Department of HHS issued regulations that defined which kinds of health insurance policies met the requirements of the "grandfather" clause. Those regulations came with estimates that over 90 million existing policies would have to be cancelled because they did not meet the requirements of the regulation. In other words, in the summer of 2010, the Obama administration took steps that would inevitably lead to the cancellation of just under 100 million policies across America as Obamacare rolled out. If there was ever any doubt earlier, from the date these regulations were published in 2010, everyone in Washington knew that any claim that Americans could keep their policies if they liked them was not true.
3. Just as expected, the effect of Obamacare and the regulations from HHS led to millions of cancellation notices going out across America in the last few months. The latest count puts the number of known cancellations at well over 5 million with many more in the works. This was not a surprise to the administration; it was exactly what Obama and the Obamacrats had planned to see occur.
4. As anger over Obama's lies has grown, the president has begun to backtrack to try to muddy the waters so as to confuse some folks about why the policy cancellations have been happening. Even so, Obama does not want those cancelled policies to be brought back; he wants everyone forced into the exchanges just as he had planned. That led to today's phony fix.
5. Under the move announced today by Obama, insurance companies will be free to sell old policies to people who currently have them so long as that move is approved by the Commissioner of Insurance of the state where the policy is sold. That sure sounds simple, but it is not. Selling a new insurance policy is not something that a company can do in a week or two. There is a lengthy process that normally takes between four and six months to complete in most states. That means that telling an insurance company that it will again be free to sell an old policy today means that it will be Spring before that policy could actually be sold. Even if some states expedite the process, there is almost no way that the policies will be in place by the first of the year.
6. On top of the time delays, there are company specific problems as well. For example, some insurance companies have pulled out of certain state markets because of all the restrictions of Obamacare. If a company was forced to cancel its policies in a state and decided that it was withdrawing from that state, it is now most likely too late for the company to change its operations so as to resume sales in that state moving forward.
7. There are also large pricing issues for these policies as well. Rather than writing another 1000 words on this point alone, suffice to say that the last minute change in the rules will not allow for the rational pricing of the surviving policies Obama is now trying to appear to resurrect.
The truth is this. Obama is trying to appear to let people keep their old policies. He is doing it in a way, however, that makes sure that just the opposite will happen. Millions upon millions will still lose their plans. Prices for insurance across America will rise by huge amounts. The government will get control over the healthcare market unlike it has ever had previously. The vast majority of middle income Americans will be squeezed so hard that they may lose their coverage. The Obamacare disaster will still hit the country hard. In short, this is a dishonest sham act by Obama.
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