The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.We are excited to be among those 16 million Americans! Blue Cross tells me that my plan is not grandfathered, and that I get to pick a new one. The new options are much, much nicer. My betters in the Nanny State know that I never should have preferred low-cost high-deductible coverage of the sort that is now illegal for Blue Cross to offer me. Instead, I get a brand-new policy with a deductible that is $3,750 lower. And it only costs $4,800 a year more than my old policy! Thank you, Mr. President!
I want this law dead, and I want some political careers ended. We've got a lot of work to do in the coming election year.
I agree with you the law should be dead. I agree with you that some political careers should end.
ReplyDeleteSo the answer is to go back to the same political institution that gave itself more power and say "pretty please don't give yourself more power or I will vote for someone else who has a slightly different vision of unconstitutional government"?
After the ignoring of public outcry and vehement opposition to Obamacare when the law was passed, my opinion has changed to resignation regarding elected officials. They are going to do whatever they want to do anyways, so why waste the time on them...
Recipe for failure. Everyone tends to do what he wants, so we need to elect people who want something different.
ReplyDeleteI've been hanging out at The Gateway Pundit, and the trolls are all aflame because Jim Hoft drew the same conclusion you did. They're calling him a liar.
ReplyDeleteI read it the way you do.
Valerie
Maybe it's not the people but the institutions that need to go.
ReplyDeleteLook at how the debate has shifted because of this failure. Now even many conservatives are saying, "We can't just let this thing wreck. People will get hurt. Republicans need to come up with an alternative."
ReplyDeleteThat's the same death spiral of human liberty that the Tories followed in the UK. "This isn't the proper role for government" gets replaced with "We can run a similar program better, cheaper, and will less intrusiveness."
They've been going down this road for fifty years and more. The solution isn't to swap the parties in charge, or to try to come up with a better solution. It's to walk away from the game -- as independence parties in both England and Scotland are realizing.
As usual, I plan instead to concentrate on primaries, which is how I think we modify the stance of the Republican Party. I agree there's no point trying to reform the Democratic Party. The sooner it dies a humiliating death the happier I'll be. I'd like the repercussions from this fraudulent, ignorant, incompetent fiasco to reverberate for at least a generation. It should be the poster child for why nothing should ever be turned over to the government if we can possibly avoid it.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about "wrecking" Obamacare. It's already a wreck that's hurting far more people than it's helping. I want to repeal it. We may need a bandaid law to get people back where they were, like a temporary hold on pre-existing condition rejections for anyone who lost coverage, or relied on new coverage, as a result of the law. But the individual mandate and the prohibitions of non-Sibelius-approved forms of insurance can go straight in the trash without hurting anyone.
I'm not inclined to wait years or decades for a new party to form. I have to vote right now, not in 2025. Not voting is not an option: these idiots have forced off the market something I rely on. It's not as though I could just work around them and avoid getting caught in their nasty little subsidy traps.
I will be writing checks to the campaigns of primary challengers all over the country. Smaller checks than I'd like, especially since the lying little sack of %&*( in the White House is costing me an extra $5K a year for absolutely no benefit, but checks nevertheless. I hope I'm not alone.
Maybe it's not the people but the institutions that need to go.
ReplyDeleteIt's the people that made the institutions. And given the empirical evidence of history--especially our own--it's hard to believe that these people who made the institutions didn't understand what they were doing.
As for Republicans needing to offer alternatives, they've done that, even passing variations of one that, while not pure market solutions, were strong moves in that direction. Both tries died in the Senate where those people, who surely knew exactly what they were doing, killed it.
T99 has the right of it: absent forming a third party that can, within just a very few election cycles, become a national power, we need to reform the Republican Party from within--grass roots and primaries.
Times today may be enough different from the 1840s that a third party will be hard to get nationally viable in a useful time frame.
Eric Hines
I hope I'm not alone.
ReplyDeleteNot as long as this fellow Texan lives and breathes.
It's a large part of why I write, also.
Eric Hines
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteT99, I don't know if you saw this:
ReplyDeleteYou can keep it law
I don't know if it will go anywhere (probably not) but the Senator is going to introduce a law that amends ObamaCare in some way, presumably to get rid of the requirement that insurance companies only sell individual policies that have been signed-off on by our Democratic overlords. He wants people to be able to buy the coverage they want. Radical, I know.
I saw that earlier today and immediately wrote my two Senators and my Congressmen to ask them to support it. I've also been leaving comments urging support of the amendment on every national comment forum I can find, all day long. The amendment is being proposed by Ron Johnson (R-Wis).
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure it won't go anywhere. It doesn't contribute to the death spiral and it doesn't prop up the failures of the law, so I think I might actually get some support. The comments on the Net about this news of so many people losing their coverage are just ugly, and fairly one-sided, even on sites like the Washington Post and CNN. The overwhelming message seems to be that the President is a stinking liar and everyone who didn't know it already, knows it now.
The occasional Obamacare fan shows up and tries to wave the flag. I just read one who said, "Well, the MAJORITY of people are going to keep their plans and their doctors."
That has a nice ring, doesn't it? "If you like your coverage and your doctor, its a little better than even odds that you may get to keep them. Period."
"Well, the MAJORITY of people are going to keep their plans and their doctors."
ReplyDeleteIt would be bad even if the majority were able to keep them but that may not be true. Let's see, where did I read that? Ah, yes:
Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. [snip]
These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
I don't know if the 85% figure is correct but it wouldn't surprise me.
(Warning: There is one possible error in the post I quote. It talks about people being "funneled to the exchanges" by their cancellation letters. Whatever the letters may say, it is still legal for individuals to buy health insurance directly from insurance companies. Someone who does so is not eligible for subsidies but at least can still buy health care, regardless of the condition the exchanges are in.)
I'll write my Congressmen about the bill over the weekend. For all the good it will do - I'm in NJ. Sigh.
Oops. Not "still buy health care" - should be "still buy health insurance". We can all - at least for now - still buy health care with our own money, insurance, ObamaCare, exchanges, not withstanding.
ReplyDeleteSo the old and busted is "you can keep your policy." The new hotness is "Some people may get to keep their policies, you never know. Period. End of story."
ReplyDeleteYes--I'm having to replace my insurance, but I'll still do it by contracting directly with Blue Cross. Why go on an exchange, even if it were possible? I'm as likely to go for a subsidy as I am to agree to a Mafia shakedown. "We're doubling your cost, but if you're a good little girl, we'll subsidize some of the new cost we just imposed on you." My vote and my compliance are not for sale.