Lisa Myers current story about the ACA, the president and health insurance is sure to elicit many adolescent "n'yah n'yah's" from the right wing blogsphere. Yet all the hubbub over this is missing an answer to a key question: Did people like their health insurance?
Before we dive into answering that questions, let's remember a few key facts. First, the people in question who are "losing" their insurance are those in the individual market, not the majority of Americans (85-90%) who get their health insurance through their employers. For me, this translates into most Americans not really caring about "Gotcha #538 of Infinity" because it doesn't affect them. If they liked the president before this still will. If they didn't, they won't and will accuse him of being Richard Nixon. Oh well.
Second, people aren't actually having their policies cancelled as they did in the past. They are being brought up to a certain standard so if they do have have health issues at some point in the future, they aren't going to soak the rest of us. This is a correction to a massive flaw that was in the old system of insurance. That leads us to the third point and back to the question I posed at the start of this post. The market for individual coverage sucks. Premiums rise at the whim of the insurance company, people are kicked off plans or not allowed on for preexisting conditions, rates fluctuate wildly resulting 50 percent of the people in this market are churned through it every year.
So, when the president said, if you like your insurance, you get to keep it, I have to wonder, did people actually like their insurance coverage? Of those that did, how many watch Fox News and read right wing blogs? More importantly, did these people know what was in their policies and was it in their best interest to continue with such policy? I realize that bringing up the words "best interests" is sure to cause an explosive adolescent stomp down the hallway but people who make poor choices in terms of health care affect my life, with or without the ACA, so I welcome the regulation.
If the people in the individual market do not like their insurance or have issues with their current policies, that effectively means the president is not a liar. Did they really like it?
5 comments:
First, the people in question who are "losing" their insurance are those in the individual market,
That's the new argument. "Hey, only a few people are being forced to lose their insurance." "They're not really losing their insurance, just being forced to give up the insurance the like for insurance they don't like."
Now for the old argument:
If you don't like the public option and can afford to spend a little more money, you can keep your private insurance. No one is going to force you to do anything.
— Markadelphia, August 5, 2009
Yet another Markadelphia LIE exposed…
When you've got to parse 'this lie isn't really a lie because of this technicality'....well, it is really a lie - and you are lying to yourself to boot.
Well, would you look at that. Even the Washington Post "Fact Checker" is now admitting that President Obama's "you can keep your plan" was a flat-out lie. They've now given it Four Pinnochios.
The administration is defending this pledge with a rather slim reed — that there is nothing in the law that makes insurance companies force people out of plans they were enrolled in before the law passed. That explanation conveniently ignores the regulations written by the administration to implement the law. Moreover, it also ignores the fact that the purpose of the law was to bolster coverage and mandate a robust set of benefits, whether someone wanted to pay for it or not.
The president’s statements were sweeping and unequivocal — and made both before and after the bill became law. The White House now cites technicalities to avoid admitting that he went too far in his repeated pledge, which, after all, is one of the most famous statements of his presidency.
The president’s promise apparently came with a very large caveat: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan — if we deem it to be adequate.”
So will Markadelphia now admit that the object of his adoration lied? My guess is that he might admit that the day after the Sun explodes… maybe.
not the majority of Americans (85-90%) who get their health insurance through their employers.
Would those be the Americans who are seeing their hours reduced to 29 a week because the employer cannot afford the much higher premiums caused by the Obamacare mandates?
Lookie here.
Back in 2010, when the Department of Health and Human Services projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individual customers will not be able to keep their existing health coverage because of the tight requirements for grandfathering policies, HHS made similar projections for health coverage offered by employers. As it turns out, many of those comfortably ensconced in jobs at large and small firms were projected to lose their health plans, too. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, we can review that now-offline document. At that time, HHS estimated that 34 to 64 percent of large employer (100 or more workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013, and that 49 to 80 percent of small employer (under 100 workers) plans would lose grandfathered status by 2013.
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