16 million Americans to lose health care coverage under Obamacare
J.D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Once upon a time, not so long ago, in an attempt to sell government takeover of the nation's healthcare system, Barack Obama played the role of serial liar.
While the bill that would later become known as Obamacare wound its way through a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010, Obama jetted around the country telling every crowd and every reporter one whopper after another about what would happen to their health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," Obama said at one rally in New Jersey in July 2009. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
That was then. As it is turning out, however, Obama's "promise" was just a lie - millions of Americans have now had their health insurance policies canceled by insurers, because they don't meet the requirements mandated by Obamacare.
Hundreds of thousands have already received cancellation notices
According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, about 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:
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 as many as 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.
Millions of 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.
Indeed, Kaiser Health News made phone calls around the country to various insurers and found that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already received cancellation notices.
"[T]he cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama's promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them," said Kaiser Health News reporters Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby.
Continuing, they reported that "Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people - about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent."
We were lied to early and often
Continuing, Kaiser said, "Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman Steve Shivinsky."
One of the other lies Obama and Democrats told regarding Obamacare is that everyone would have lower rates. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently backpedaled on that claim, saying she never said "everyone" would get lower rates.
Only - she did. See that lie here: [http://www.weeklystandard.com].
It should be extremely apparent by now to all but the most partisan of Americans that, when it comes to the promises made about Obamacare, we were flat-out lied to, period. And we were lied to often.
Sources:
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org
http://www.naturalnews.com/z042702_Obamacare_health_care_coverage_16_million_Americans.html