Obama: Okay, This Time You Can Really Keep Your Plan
By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
In response to the raging Democratic freak-out in Congress, President Obama announced an administrative plan that would putatively permit people in the individual insurance market to keep their current plans. It’s impossible to say definitively what Obama’s proposal will do, but the most likely (and best-case) scenario is: very little.
The shorthand explanation for what’s going on here is that everybody — the insurance companies, members of Congress, and Obama — is bullshitting. The longhand explanation is a lot more complicated.
Insurance companies cancel their individual plans all the time. The Affordable Care Act grandfathered in current plans, but that grandfathering mostly depended on insurance companies deciding to keep those plans going, and few of them did: They decided instead to phase out their old plans and create new ones in the Obamacare exchanges. That’s why, even though Obama knew that his health-care law would disrupt the individual market, he didn’t expect the wave of cancellation notices that people have received. In his press conference today, Obama said that he expected that the provisions in Obamacare to grandfather in existing individual policy holders would work, and they didn’t.
Republicans in Congress, trailed by panicky Democrats, are trying to exploit people’s consternation by either allowing (in the case of Republican Fred Upton’s bill) or requiring (in the case of Democrat Mary Landrieu’s) insurance companies to continue these plans. But they are probably bullshitting about this, too: Insurance companies say it’s way too late for them to start reissuing plans for 2014 they hadn’t planned to issue.
(More here.)
In response to the raging Democratic freak-out in Congress, President Obama announced an administrative plan that would putatively permit people in the individual insurance market to keep their current plans. It’s impossible to say definitively what Obama’s proposal will do, but the most likely (and best-case) scenario is: very little.
The shorthand explanation for what’s going on here is that everybody — the insurance companies, members of Congress, and Obama — is bullshitting. The longhand explanation is a lot more complicated.
Insurance companies cancel their individual plans all the time. The Affordable Care Act grandfathered in current plans, but that grandfathering mostly depended on insurance companies deciding to keep those plans going, and few of them did: They decided instead to phase out their old plans and create new ones in the Obamacare exchanges. That’s why, even though Obama knew that his health-care law would disrupt the individual market, he didn’t expect the wave of cancellation notices that people have received. In his press conference today, Obama said that he expected that the provisions in Obamacare to grandfather in existing individual policy holders would work, and they didn’t.
Republicans in Congress, trailed by panicky Democrats, are trying to exploit people’s consternation by either allowing (in the case of Republican Fred Upton’s bill) or requiring (in the case of Democrat Mary Landrieu’s) insurance companies to continue these plans. But they are probably bullshitting about this, too: Insurance companies say it’s way too late for them to start reissuing plans for 2014 they hadn’t planned to issue.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
There is no need for a longhand explanation. We are seeing the results of central command and control.
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