Obama Dares Insurance Companies to Put Up or Shut Up [View all]

[warrior1]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/obama-dares-insurance-companies-put-or-shut

Here's the latest on Obamacare:



The White House on Thursday will announce a plan for allowing insurance companies to continue offering existing individual insurance policies even if they fall short of the coverage standards set by the 2010 health-care law, a Democratic official briefed on the plan said.

....The plan, which the official said could be implemented without passing legislation, would allow insurance companies to extend "substandard'' plans in 2014 only if they are already in existence. Unlike the House bill, the administration plan wouldn't allow insurance companies to offer such plans to new customers.


Here's my guess: this is primarily a put-up-or-shut-up move from Obama, not a plan designed to really fix the problem of canceled policies. I base this on two things.

First, I think insurance companies are mostly allowed to do this already. Second, I think that most of the canceled policies have been canceled because insurance companies wanted to cancel them. They were designed in the first place to entice buyers away from their old grandfathered policies, and insurance companies did this explicitly so that they would be free to cancel them when 2014 rolled around. This allowed insurers to replace them with more expensive policies without taking any heat for it. They could just blame it on Obamacare.

snip please read the rest at the website