Dean Baker | The Obama Pledge on Keeping Your Insurance

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/obama-pledge-keeping-your-insurance-1384440437

First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.

The plans being terminated because they don't meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA.

However if the insurers didn't tell their clients that the new plans would only be available for a short period of time, the blame would seem to rest with the insurance companies, not the ACA. After all, President Obama did not promise people that he would keep insurers from developing new plans that will not comply with the provisions of the ACA.

In this case also it is wrong to view the insurers as passive actors who are being forced to stop offering plans because of the ACA. The price increases charged by insurers are not events outside of the control of insurers. If an insurer offers a plan which has many committed buyers, then presumably it would be able to structure its changes in ways that are consistent with the ACA. If it decides not to do so, this is presumably because the insurer has decided that it is not interested in continuing to offer the plan.

[RBInMaine]

1. A man who speaks the TRUTH.

[Triana]

2. Obama didn't lie to people. The insurance companies did!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024033769

[Savannahmann]

3. That is partially true

In other words, there is some truth to it, but that is not the whole truth, and the only truth. The rest of the truth is that if there was any change in the policies, for example, a rate increase, then it could and probably would be ineligible for the Grandfathered safeguards. Since most policies are renewed annually with a change in some sort, the aforementioned rate increase being normal, then the policy would be ineligible. Then there are the companies moving out of states, or the individual policy market. There are numerous news stories on that happening, and those stories are all generally speaking, ignored here.