Cancelling The Cancelled Plan Meme

Here's an interesting study on how the whole cancelled plan meme isn't quite the boiling pit of sewage they made it out to be. Here are its main findings.

First, this market was characterized by high turnover: Only 42 percent of people with nongroup coverage at the outset of the study period retained that coverage after twelve months. Second, 80 percent of people experiencing coverage changes acquired other insurance within a year, most commonly from an employer. Third, turnover varied across groups, with stable coverage more common for whites and self-employed people than for other groups. Turnover was particularly high among adults ages 19–35, with only 21 percent of young adults retaining continuous nongroup coverage for two years. Given estimates from 2012 that 10.8 million people were covered in this market, these results suggest that 6.2 million people leave nongroup coverage annually.

What does it mean?

This suggests that the nongroup market was characterized by frequent disruptions in coverage before the ACA and that the effects of the recent cancellations are not necessarily out of the norm. These results can serve as a useful pre-ACA baseline with which to evaluate the law’s long-term impact on the stability of nongroup coverage. 

The president should still be criticized for making it sound like the ACA would fix all of this but the fact is that without the ACA, if you liked your insurance, you wouldn't have gotten to keep it anyway.