One Month Into ObamaCare Number Uninsured Americans Up
Photo Credit: Fox News Obamacare was sold to credulous “Progressives” on the grounds that it was the way to achieve universal health insurance coverage for all Americans. But the Congressional Budget Office scored the legislation as leaving 30 million uninsured 10 years after full implementation! That is more than half the nation’s uninsured pre-Obamacare.
But just one month after Obamacare went into effect, the number of uninsured Americans has gone up rather than down. Just last week, Florida Blue announced it was issuing termination notices for 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California cancelled 160,000 policies, about half of its individual policies in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh dropped 20 percent of its individual policies. In Philadelphia, Independence Blue Cross nixed 45% of its individual policies. CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield cancelled 76,000 individual plans in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC, over 40 percent of its individual policies in those states.
But didn’t President Obama tell us that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it? Current policies were supposed to be “grandfathered” in under Obamacare. But the HHS regulations implementing that provision are so restrictive that few current policies qualify under it. The Weekly Standard estimates that as a result 16 million current individual policies, in a nationwide market of 19 million, would be cancelled because they do not meet the new regulatory requirements of Obamacare. That is 85 percent of the individual health insurance market, which involves health coverage individuals buy outside of employer provided insurance.
This is just the beginning, however, of the Obamacare collapse in health insurance coverage. CBO estimates that as many as 20 million will lose their employer provided health insurance under Obamacare. Former CBO Director Douglas-Holtz-Eakin estimated in a study for the American Action Forum that the number will be 40 million.
The individual and employer mandates were supposed to force most Americans to buy the health insurance that the Obama Administration specifies they must buy. But in most cases, the penalty for failing to comply is only a small fraction of the cost of the required health insurance. Moreover, employers can give their workers a raise now by dropping costly Obamacare coverage, and most workers can get Obamacare subsidies on the Exchanges as well, which will further induce employers to drop their coverage. Workers on their own can evade the individual mandate, and rely on Obamacare’s guaranteed issue and community rating regulatory requirements to buy coverage at standard prices if they get sick with costly illnesses.
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