There’s been a lot of chatter all about how the Affordable Care Act has been dropping people’s coverage — if folks are in plans that don’t meet some basic requirements, they are going to get better insurance.
NPR recently tried to find people to share their story and the results are probably not what they expected:
Here’s a quote from Fran Coffin: “Wish I could scan and send but can’t. But my story is wonderful. Got the cancellation notice from Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. Called, thinking the worst. Happy to report, that as of the first of the year my insurance will be $170 per month. Also was able to add dental for an additional $30. I have been paying $557 and change without dental. This is exactly what the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT is suppose to be about. I am self employed and have been struggling to pay the $557, but know that insurance is important. THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT !!”
Here’s another one: “My 60 year old father who lives just above the poverty line has been uninsured for over 20 years. He finally has insurance now- at $20/month- thanks to Obamacare. I, for one, am grateful.”
The Affordable Care Act is working — slowly, but surely. We need to stand up strong and not apologize for our signature achievement, even when we hit a few bumps in the road.
Part of the problem too is that some insurance sucks. There are plans out there that are complete garbage (ultra low cost; next to no benefit), and those plans aren’t allowed under the ACA. That’s a good thing. If you have one of those plans, it may be cancelled, and you’ll need new insurance, or the cost may go up. That stinks, and the president shouldn’t have said that you could keep it. He should have said that if you have “quality” insurance you can keep it. But, we need to stay focused on the big picture. How do we get as many people as possible covered (with quality insurance) so that health care costs will go down? The ACA helps to move us in the right direction. We (the insured) cannot keep paying for every uninsured person to go to the emergency room for every single medical issue that comes up. It forces the costs of medicine and coverage through the roof. All this hand wringing by the media and politicos is hard to listen to but at the end of the day, as a country, we will be in a better place with the ACA (since we can’t get a single payer model through the do-nothing, lousy Congress). Over time, costs will start to come down (or at least rise more slowly), and it will help the economy because people will have money to spend on things other than health care. Oh, and the CBO says that the ACA will reduce the deficit/debt too (which conservatives supposedly care about (all evidence to the contrary)). Finally, there are a lot of people out there making anecdotal comments about the ACA that are just plain wrong, and they’re only doing it to pile on the president because they hate him. The ACA ain’t perfect but it’s an improvement. I’m still waiting for the Republicans to come up with some alternative plan that helps with the costs of health care. Oh, wait, the mandatory coverage part is their plan………
With any kind of roll out there will be apprehension and the poll number reflect that, but if you look at ACA polling in August and you compare it to recent polls, the numbers are the same. So with the poor website roll out, if the GOP thinks it has lost support, it hasn’t.
sdI saw clips of his “interview” with the President — and I use that term lightly, since he’s so bad at it — and when he went so hard at how people couldn’t ‘keep’ their insurance… because, he admitted, their insurance plan was so BAD, I wanted to scream at the TV.
I’m sure it’ll be an anxiety-causing surprise to the very tiny number of folks this would apply to out there when they see their previous plan was cancelled, but when they use the exchange and quickly find out their new insurance coverage will be cheaper and better, I’m sure they’ll be happy about it in the end.
Furthermore, I’m sure a very large number of these people — if ACA was never passed — would have faced the same circumstances, as their insurers would cancel plans the moment some family actually needed to start using their insurance for condition of some kind — so they could then reenroll that family, but this time without coverage for any preexisting conditions.
Obviously, there are going to be some kinks and bugs when any major change occurs, but this particular one is a feature, not a bug.
The exchange sucks. I’m an under 30 non smoking part timer who should be perfect for this but I have to figure out up front if I want the full subsidy, some of it, or none of it and figure out how that will affect my taxes, already complicated since I worked three different jobs in the same year and was unemployed for a spell, and all this before I even getti see what coverage options I have. Punting this to the states was politically necessary but makes implementation that much works. Big kudos to KY and MA Connector-ILd is awful.
Here is the basic problem. Health insurance is complicated. Purchasing health insurance is not like purchasing a book over the internet. There are a lot of factors involved.
And, jconway, I want to try to answer your question about taxes. If you qualify for a subsidy, regardless of your tax status, that’s the best deal. There is no reason to not take the subsidy.
I figured as much, I just wish I could shop for plans first before I had to make that decision. But I’ll probably take the full subsidy and sign up for a silver one, I also will wait until I hear back from a few places that might hire me with full benefits.
But my point is, the most frustrating thing about our private healthcare system is how inefficient, bureaucratic, and patchwork it is. I think a public option was viewed by both the right, the media, and most unfortunately the Obama administration as a “government takeover” narrative. It should be a right, not just for moral reasons but because it would be so
Much easier. And why it’s never been sold like that is beyond me. But SSI is significantly easier and more secure than a 401k. I don’t see why Medicare for All wasn’t sold the same way. It’s like an easy button for healthcare. It shouldn’t be this difficult and I resent people (excluding you since it wasn’t your intent) who think it should be complicated. My brief consulting job took me inside a lot of HMO HQ and the thinking inside them is ghastly.
I agree. Single payer is a much simpler system. While I prefer single-payer, this approach (mandatory insurance) is the only approach that President Obama could get through Congress.
Despite the complications, I am a strong supporter of Obamacare. This concept will, eventually, succeed. We must always remember our goals. The ultimate goal is make sure that all citizens have access to affordable healthcare. While not perfect, the ACA accomplishes this goal.
“a number that totals between 12 million and 15 million people. ”
Washington Post.
Like I said… a very tiny number…. many of whom would have had their insurance cancelled anyway, for the simple matter of using it the year before, but with no exchange to provide them with insurance that would be better and likely cheaper to turn to.
It’s an inconvenience, but the sort that will save thousand for these particular families in the medium run, not to mention some of their lives going forward.
“a very small percentage”, and whatever the final number, it is NOT insignificant that they, and we, were told things about the plan which were not correct, in an effort to garner support for the ACA in order to pass it.
…that existing plans were grandfathered into ACA. The cancellations were insurance company decisions not forced by that law.
When an employee loses his job,he is offered COBRA insurance, which basically allows him/her to continue on the employer’s plan for 18 months, by paying the premium. That law is intended to help people who are between jobs. Before the 18 month period expires, notice is given. I suspect that these COBRA notices are also being called cancellations, but they are simply normal activities that occur in the health insurance industry.
AND, our good buddy, Eric Fehrnstrom is complaining that he received a cancellation notice! Well, as a Massachusetts citizen, his insurance would have been provided by his consulting firm. I don’t know his circumstances, but it’s been a year since the election, and poor Eric lost his job when Mitt Romney and Scott Brown both lost. So, I’m guessing that Eric is being disingenuous (AGAIN) when he claims that he got a cancellation notice and implies that it has something to do with ACA.
I won’t argue you’re wrong because I don’t know but neither do you and you’ve said so…
“I suspect that”
“I don’t know his circumstances”
“So, I’m guessing”.
Not a very informative post.
Bluewatch’s post may not be informative in the sense of providing new facts, but a lot of the “Obamacare killed my doctor” examples that crop up in the media seem strangely missing details. The most famous being the three examples Hannity touted.
So Fehrnstrom — not a neutral observer might we add — can make all sorts of claims. If he doesn’t address the points bluewatch makes above, none of it is informative either.
If the ACA had not passed, would these policies have been canceled?
These cancellations are occurring because the policies don’t meet the standards of the ACA. If the facts had been properly disclosed and reported, instead of the famous “promise”… I doubt the act would have been passed. Period.
These policies are not being cancelled as the result of the ACA. There is a regulation that allows these policies to be grandfathered, so that they qualify. The ACA does not require that individual policies be terminated.
This is a really good point, bluewatch. I wonder if insurance companies don’t want to be offering plans that cannot accept new enrollees, so they are cancelling plans that are grandfathered and instituting new fully compliant plans. They probably don’t want grandfathered plans because they have to administer those plans but cant take new insureds.
There are not 12 to 15 million people with cancelled policies. Instead, that’s an estimate of the total number of people who currently have individual policies. Some percentage of that number might be cancelled, and it’s not possible to know the actual number. It certainly won’t be 12 million people. Lots of people are throwing around crazy numbers, because they are working hard to make Obamacare look as bad as possible.
I just saw a post on Facebook that said, “When Bush lied people died; when Obama lied people got better health insurance!” I know which I prefer.
n/t
When the ACA was enacted, a regulation was created that grandfathered in all existing health plans. In other words, every health insurance plan, even the crappy ones were automatically deemed to have qualified under ACA. So, Obama was telling the truth when he said you don’t have to change your health insurance. But, he should have added the phrase, “because of the ACA”.
So what happened? Well, many insurance companies acted like insurance companies. They cancelled some people’s policies because those individuals were sick and costing them money. They law does not prevent cancellation of the grandfathered plans.
And, why doesn’t Obama blame the insurance companies? Well, he needs them as a partner to get this whole thing to work, and he doesn’t want them to be defensively attacking the ACA.
President Obama did not lie. He said what he believed to be true at the time, and he was surprised by the actions of the insurance industry.
The entire “cancellation” brouhaha is a strawman, erected by the GOP to distract public and media attention from their failed hostage-taking — and its many and unreported expenses and consequences.
The GOP is happy to have communities like us discussing yet another round of non-issues, lies, and distortions regarding health care, so that we do NOT discuss the next shutdown looming in mid-January.
In particular, the GOP would like its scorched-earth political terrorism conveniently off the front pages during next year’s mid-terms.
Allowing ourselves to be sucked into this issue is like being sucked into a climate-change “debate” with a denier — arguing with the dining room table is more enjoyable.
The website will be fixed. As the actual data rolls in about the actual effects of the ACA — especially on working-class men and women and on our most unfortunate — the data will show (to the GOPs chagrin) that the ACA is a great improvement for an overwhelming majority of Americans. Unlike climate change, this issue will solve itself in six months.
Meanwhile, we need to return the political focus to the failed political terrorism of the GOP. We need to remind people of how many billions the GOP squandered. We need to remind small business owners of how much the failed GOP economic policies are harming them, and of how much they would benefit if the Democratic agenda were in place.
We already won the health care battle, that’s why the GOP is so incensed. The ACA, for all its flaws, is a huge improvement over what preceded it — as time will tell. I think it’s time we send these GOP thugs back under the rocks where they live, and remind ourselves that WE ALREADY WON THIS.
I think it’s time to focus on the issues that need to be decided, rather than getting sucked into bar-room brawls with sore losers about a battle that has already been won.
… there’s no way around it: the ACA is a half-measure demanding comprehensive coverage over the entire population from private insurance companies that are neither inclined to do so nor functionally able to do so. The horsetrading and compromised involved in getting it passed is fundamentally incompatible with the actual calculus of operation. So I don’t think that the ACA is a ‘signature achievement’. I think the ACA is just a waypoint on the way to our achievement.
The only workable, efficient and sane solution is single-payer. Most every other sane and economically viable nation in the world has already come to this conclusion but because the troglodytes in the far right of the right wing party in this country still have George III stalking their dreams we gotta get there in the messiest, nastiest way possible…
Fortunately, I think we’ve reached a tipping point and there is no going back. That, however, is no guarantee of forward progress…