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Health Care Shoppers Aren’t as Dumb as Obama Thinks

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Photo Credit: ReutersPresident Obama calls them “substandard” insurance plans. But to many of the people who bought individual insurance policies that are now being canceled under the Affordable Care Act, their choice of insurance was a prudent decision that met their needs at a price that will be hard to beat under the ACA.

Jim Stadler is one of the “5 percenters”—the 5% of Americans with health insurance policies they purchased on their own—who got notified recently that their carrier was canceling coverage because it didn’t meet the tougher new minimum requirements of the ACA. Stadler, a freelance writer who lives outside of Charlotte, N.C., was laid off from a full-time job at an ad agency in 2009, at which point he became a freelancer and bought individual health coverage for him and his two kids.

Under Stadler’s expiring policy, his premiums are $411 a month, for coverage that always seemed adequate to him. “It’s not a substandard policy,” he says. “I thought it was a great deal.” The premium for the new policy offered by his insurer will be $843 a month, with coverage that’s more or less the same as far as he’s concerned. But new policies are required to include free preventive services such as mammograms and colonoscopies, and they can’t be canceled or priced higher for sicker people, which is why the cost of some policies is going up.

Since Stadler’s family’s income is too high to qualify for federal subsidies, he’s considering putting his kids on the policy his wife, a teacher, gets through her job. But that would be expensive, too. “The thing that gets me,” says Stadler, who voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election, “is I thought Barack Obama was the only guy I could trust in Washington. He ended up lying to me because he said, if I like my insurance, I could keep it.”

The 5-percenter problem could end up being a much more serious albatross for Obamacare and its mostly Democratic supporters than the notorious web site snafus and other temporary snags, which can mostly be fixed. Obama did, in fact, say repeatedly, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But policies held by as many as 10 million Americans don’t meet the minimum requirements of the law and are now being canceled. Obama this week added a “vast majority” clause to his earlier claim: “For the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it,” he said in a recent speech on health-care reform.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Blames ‘Bad Apple Insurers’ for Canceled Insurance Plans

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesPresident Obama tried a new tack Wednesday as he fought back against criticism of his Obamacare claims.

Fact-checkers and journalists have ruled that Obama wasn’t being truthful when he claimed that people who liked their insurance could keep it. Obama during a speech in Boston sought to cast the issue Wednesday as trying to weed out “bad apple insurers” who don’t provide enough coverage.

“One of the things health reform was designed to do was to help not only the uninsured but also the under-insured,” Obama said. “And there are a number of Americans, fewer than 5 percent of Americans, who’ve got cut-rate plans that don’t offer real financial protection in the event of a serious illness or an accident.

“Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Millions Lose Health Coverage, White House Blames Insurance Companies

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstOn Tuesday, the White House finally came up with a strategy to explain why millions of Americans are losing their health insurance plans — blame the insurance companies.

White House spokesman Jay Carney rewrote President Barack Obama’s much-repeated “you can keep it” promise Tuesday afternoon, and began blaming health insurance companies for canceling millions of individuals’ insurance plans.

“If you had a plan… and you liked it, and you’ve kept it, you can keep if forever as long as your insurer offers it,” Carney told reporters during the daily press briefing.

In the last few weeks, insurance companies have already canceled more than 2 million individual plans, as a direct result of Obamacare. The canceled plans were bought by individuals directly, rather than via employers or associations, and do not include coverage demanded by Obama and his deputies.

The two millions cancellations — so far — contradict Obama’s repeated public promises that Americans could keep their insurance plans after Obamacare is enacted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Obama Knew He Was Lying About Keeping Your Insurance

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Photo Credit: APIn a blockbuster report on Monday, sources told NBC News that at least half to three quarters of those who buy individual insurance will have that insurance cancelled by their insurers over the next year thanks to changes mandated by Obamacare. A huge number of the people forced off their current insurance will have “sticker shock,” the sources said. What’s more, President Obama knew all that even as he campaigned on the promise that if you liked your insurance, you could keep it: “the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates has been a supporter of Obamacare, but stated, “This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either.” On Monday, White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo said that people might have to pay more for insurance, but that their insurance would be better: “One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions. The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits.”

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Obama’s Ex-Bodyguard Losing Health Coverage

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Photo Credit: WNDPresident Obama repeatedly has promised that no one will lose his health insurance because of Obamacare, declaring, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

Media fact checkers were doubtful, and all the way back in 2009 PolitiFact gave it a “half true” rating. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, it could be time now to change that to “pants on fire” or even a retroactive “lie of the year.”

Among those with evidence Obama wasn’t telling the truth is Dan Bongino, a former member of the Secret Service’s elite Presidential Protective Division.

That’s because he is losing his coverage due to Obamacare.

“My plan was canceled, simple as that,” he told WND.

Read more from this story HERE.

Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes

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Photo Credit: kaiserhealthnews.orgHealth plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost — especially after the inclusion of federal subsidies for those who qualify. The law requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 “essential” benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care. In addition, insurers cannot reject people with medical problems or charge them higher prices. The policies must also cap consumers’ annual expenses at levels lower than many plans sold before the new rules.

But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them.

“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” said Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health condition that has required multiple surgeries.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Individual Mandate Deadline Moved Up

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Photo Credit: APYou’ll have to get health coverage by Valentine’s Day or thereabouts to avoid penalties for being uninsured, the Obama administration confirmed Wednesday.

That is about six weeks earlier than a March 31 deadline often cited previously.

The explanation: Health insurance coverage typically starts on the first day of a given month, and it takes up to 15 days to process applications.

You still have to be covered by March 31 to avoid the new penalties for remaining uninsured. But to successfully accomplish that you have to send in your application by the middle of February. Coverage would then start Mar. 1.

The Jackson Hewitt tax preparation company first pointed out the wrinkle with the health care law’s least popular requirement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Republicans Didn’t Sabotage Health Exchanges, Obama Did

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Photo Credit: Ken James/BloombergFor the first week that the federal health-care exchanges were running … well, crawling … the Obama administration claimed that no one could get through because of overwhelming pent-up demand. Essentially it spent a week arguing that no one could have predicted that, in a country of 300 million people, 2.4 percent of those people might stop by sometime in the first seven days to check out the administration’s signature legislative achievement.

We can now dismiss that theory, because the administration has: “Six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government acknowledged for the first time Sunday it needed to fix design and software problems that have kept customers from applying online for coverage.”

Presumably, it would not have given that interview if its efforts to fix the systems had been successful this weekend. The Hill reports that the system will go offline again late tonight for more repairs.

So prepare yourself for the next theory: This is the fault of Republicans. Had Republicans created state exchanges as they were supposed to, agreed to the Medicaid expansion and provided more funding, the reasoning goes, everything would be going swimmingly.

I blame the Republicans for a lot of things, from their support for atrocious farm policies to the counterproductive showdown theater that is: 1. Wreaking havoc on everything from government data websites to the Smithsonian; 2. Not saving any money, because we just agreed to pay furloughed workers; 3. Not noticeably advancing the cause of repealing Obamacare; and 4. Grinding down the public’s opinion of the Republican Party from a stump to a hole.

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Dr. Ben Carson: This Is the Beginning of the Collapse of Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy Greg Richter. Delaying implementation of key parts of the healthcare law and losing the support of labor unions are just the beginning of trouble for Obamacare, says Dr. Ben Carson.

“It’s gonna be a lot worse than this. This is the beginning of the collapse,” the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon said on Fox News Channel’s “Your World” on Tuesday.

“Usually when you roll out a big program, you roll it out bit by bit. You determine what’s working. You can change things,” Carson said. “But to try to roll out something this massive without really knowing what the intricacies are is quite foolish.” Read more from this story HERE.

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photo credit: azrainmanGOP-controlled House to vote Wednesday on delaying key parts of ObamaCare

By Fox News. The Republican-controlled House will vote Wednesday on delaying key parts of ObamaCare, the party’s latest effort to dismantle the law amid distress signals from inside the administration.

The lawmakers will vote on bills to delay the start of the law’s separate employer and individual mandates, which respectively require smaller businesses and Americans to purchase insurance next year or face penalties.

The Obama administration earlier this month delayed the start of the employer mandate, saying the decision was in response to business owners expressing concerns about the law’s complex reporting requirements.

Late Tuesday, the White House issued a threat to veto the Republican bills, saying their passage would help “further efforts to repeal a law that is already helping millions of Americans stay on their parents’ plans until age 26, millions more who are getting free preventive care that catches illness early on, and thousands of children with pre-existing conditions who are now covered.”

Political analysts said that delaying the start until 2015 was an attempt to slow Republicans during next year’s elections from pinning ObamaCare problems on Democratic candidates — particularly those in Congress who supported the 2010 law and are seeking re-election. Read more from this story HERE.

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74% of small businesses will fire workers, cut hours under Obamacare

By Paul Bedard. Despite the administration’s controversial decision to delay forcing companies to join Obamacare for a year, three-quarters of small businesses are still making plans to duck the costly law by firing workers, reducing hours of full-time staff, or shift many to part-time, according to a sobering survey released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate,” said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.

Under Obamacare, just 30 hours — not the nationally recognized 40 hours — is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine.

The administration recently decided to wait a year before businesses had to comply, but many are trying to get ready anyway. The president did not delay the mandate that Americans must have health insurance or pay a fine, however.

The Chamber’s second quarter small business survey found that just 30 percent are ready for the law and even understand what is required. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APLooking to keep GOP out of health care decisions, Obama threatens to veto bill backing his own delay

By Tom Howell Jr. President Obama has threatened to veto a House bill that would put into law a decision he made two weeks ago.

In a statement, the White House said the Obama administration “strongly opposes” a pair of Republican-led bills to delay the employer mandate and individual mandate within the president’s signature health care law.

The administration quietly announced July 2 in a pair of blog posts that it would delay by one year, to 2015, penalties tied to a mandate requiring firms with the equivalent of 50 or more full-time workers to provide insurance or pay fines, citing the business community’s concerns about complex reporting requirements.

Eyeing an opportunity to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans cued up votes for Wednesday on bills to codify the White House’s delay and match it with a delay of the provision requiring most Americans to obtain some form of health insurance.

The votes will force Democrats to align with the president or distance themselves from the overhaul in the wake of its recent stumbles. Read more from this story HERE.

CBO: 20+ Week Fetuses Aborted at Rate of 30 Per Day; Saves Money for Government-Run Health Care

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Photo Credit: APUnborn babies who have reached at least 20 weeks of age in utero are aborted at a rate of about 30 per day in the United States, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO has also concluded that aborting babies at 20 weeks or later in pregnancy saves money for the government-run federal-state Medicaid system.

The CBO made these determinations when doing its official “Cost Estimate” of a federal bill that would prohibit abortions at 20 weeks or later into pregnancy (except in cases of reported rape, incest against a minor or to save the life of the mother).

“Based on data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), CBO estimates that, each year, about 11,000 abortions take place 20 weeks or more after fertilization,” said the CBO’s analysis of H.R. 1797, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

In a 365-day year, 11,000 late-term abortions works out to a little more than 30 per day—counting weekends and holidays.

Read more from this story HERE.