Top Ten Excuses for Obamacare Cancellations

White House press secretary Jay Carney begs to differ.

The Obama administration and its loyalists are sticking to their guns when it comes to the president’s promise that “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep it” under his signature law.

As reports of millions of Americans’ losing the current, preferred plans roll in from across the nation, Democrats are finding new ways to spin the process or justify the cancellations, all while claiming President Obama didn’t mislead the public with his guarantee. From talk of “conversion letters” to disparaging remarks about the doomed plans, here are the top excuses Democrats are giving:

1. “Transitioning”

Americans aren’t receiving “so-called cancellation notices”; they’re getting help “transitioning” off their previous plans, according to Representative Sander Levin (D., Mich.). He echoed the rhetoric of Florida Blue CEO Patrick Geraghty, who made that same claim on Meet the Press earlier in the week.

2. “Bad-apple Insurers”
During a speech in Boston on Wednesday, President Obama laid the blame for canceled plans on “bad-apple insurers.” The president stood by his original promise and accused critics of being “grossly misleading.”
3. “Conversion Letters”
During her weekly press conference, Nancy Pelosi attempted to correct reports of cancellation letters by referring to them “conversion letters.” She explained that plans that have changed since the law passed are being improved by a “patients’ ‘Bill of Rights,’” and plans change from year to year anyway.
4. “Five Percent”
President Obama, Pelosi, and other Democrats have tried to downplay the scale of the cancellation problem by suggesting “fewer than 5 percent” of Americans will be affected. Ultimately though, that “5 percent” figures comes out to approximately 15 million people who will not be able to keep their plans, and other estimates are far higher, ranging to as many as 93 or 129 million plans’ being changed.
5. “Substandard”
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained that “substandard plans” would be terminated because they didn’t provide coverage for certain services, such as maternity care or prescription drugs. President Obama use the same word during his Boston speech to describe the millions of canceled plans, as have other Democrats throughout the week.
6. “A Fraction of a Fraction”
Later in the week, on Thursday, Carney said Americans losing their current healthcare plans were a “fraction of a fraction” of the population during Thursday’s daily briefing. Those elusive plans were “crummy,” according to Carney. On Friday, the press secretary claimed that that those receiving letters were just “a small sliver” of the population.
7. “Scam”
Representative Frank Pallone (D., N.J.) called pre-Obamacare insurance plans “a scam” during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan on Wednesday night. In a later interview that same evening, Pallone told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that those plans were “lousy” and “skeletal,” and that nobody would want to buy them anymore.
8. “That’s Not Health Insurance”
James Carville argued that the plans that were canceled actually weren’t “health insurance,” because they didn’t meet certain requirements. On HannityWednesday night the Clinton operative called it “irresponsible” that some of the previous plans didn’t include certain types of coverage.
9. “Empty”
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that previous plans were “empty,” thus meriting cancellation. Patrick introduced the president in Boston the day before and heralded his state’s health-care system, which has some of the nation’s highest premiums, as a model.
10. Only “Good Insurance”
Democratic senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose tough reelection effort next year is sure to focus on Obamacare, claimed that her party’s vow was much more qualified than it sounded to most observers. “We said when we passed that, ‘If you had insurance that was good insurance that you wanted to keep it, you could keep it,’” she told The Weekly Standard.

Via: NRO
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Insurance Companies Profit from Obamacare

No one can reasonably deny that the major Insurance Companies were the driving force behind the writing of the Affordable Care Act legislation. “The health care industry spent nearly $500 million lobbying for health care issues in 2012, and $243 million so far in 2013.” Obamacare or Corporate-care: The Writing of the Affordable Care Act, sums up the process.

“Essentially, the ACA was designed to write the for-profit health care system into law, increase corporate profits, and to discourage people from demanding a health care system that would actually provide real health care coverage for all. The ACA wasn’t written to fix a broken system – it was written to ensure that the broken system would be kept in place. After all, from the standpoint of the health care industry, the system is working just fine for their profits.”

Since the public insurance providers are enjoying a jump in their stock values and a protected rise in premiums, the normal conclusion is that Obamacare is the big winner in the socialization of medicine. Before going any further, The Health Care Blog raises a curious issues regarding Obamacare in the article,Does Obamacare Limit Profits for Health Insurance Companies in Your State?

“The ACA imposes a minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) on all insurers. The MLR is the amount of money spent on covered person medical care divided by the total revenue received through premiums.

The ACA requires health insurers in the individual and small group market to spend 80 percent of their premiums (after subtracting taxes and regulatory fees) on medical costs. The corresponding figure for large groups is 85 percent.

Even though the MLR is a national law, it may not apply in your state. Why? Because many States are petitioning for a waiver.

Why did these States receive waivers? For a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons is due to the fact that some states have a less competitive medical market. Maine, for instance, requested a MLR of 65%. The reason was that State only has two large commercial insurers, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield (with 49% of the market) and MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company (with 33% of the market).”

Via: California Political Review

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Insurers Now “Scared to Death” of Obamacare

Bloomberg has a must-read story this morning highlighting yet more faults with Obamacare’s exchanges. Specifically, the faults in the exchanges’ computer software aren’t just hitting consumers trying to shop for plans—they’re hitting insurers as well:

Insurers are getting faulty and incomplete data from the new U.S.-run health exchange, which may mean some Americans won’t be covered even after they sign up for an insurance plan.…The companies are receiving electronic files that can’t open or have so much missing information on new enrollees they’re unusable, the consultants said.

Some insurers have been forced to fix entries by hand, said Bob Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant based in Arlington, Virginia.

“If we don’t see substantial improvement by the end of this week, then I would throw up the yellow flag,” said Dan Schuyler, a consultant advising states and insurers on the exchanges. “If we don’t see it in the next two to three weeks, it’s time for red flags. The concern is some people could get to Jan. 1, and not have coverage.”

Last week, the Administration claimed that heavy volume was the prime cause of the exchanges’ delays. But today’s Bloomberg report, as with other news reports over the weekend, all suggest bigger issues with the federal data hub and other elements of the IT infrastructure needed to support enrollment.

Via:The Foundry

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