Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance
Daily News Article — Posted on October 31, 2013
(by S.A. Miller, The New York Post) – The White House finally admitted Monday that President Obama is breaking his promise that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it under ObamaCare.
“It’s true that there are existing health-care plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, referring to plans nixed under the sweeping new law.
NBC News reported Monday that sources deeply involved in ObamaCare concede that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to have coverage canceled in the next year.
One expert said the figure could be as high as 80 percent.
Obama administration officials knew when the regulations were written in 2010 that 40 to 67 percent of consumers on the individual market would lose coverage, NBC said.
Carney insisted Monday that only “substandard” plans would be yanked under ObamaCare.
“There are some that can be grandfathered if people want to keep insurance that is substandard,” Carney added.
“What is also true: Americans who have insurance on the existing individual market will now have numerous options available to them, and six out of 10 will pay less than $100 per month in premiums for better insurance.”
Obama has repeatedly pledged that his overhaul of the health-care system wouldn’t deprive Americans of their current insurance plans or doctors.
“We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period,” he declared on June 15, 2009.
The admission that some will, in fact, lose the plans they’ve got comes amid mounting ObamaCare headaches, including a day-long crash of the glitch-plagued Web sites where Americans are supposed to sign up for mandatory health-insurance plans.
What’s more, a growing number of consumers are shocked to discover that the law has caused them to get hit with massive premium increases, lose their doctor or simply get dropped by their insurance company.
Elderly New Yorkers were left reeling when they received notices that insurance companies were booting their doctors from the popular Medicare Advantage program because of ObamaCare, The Post recently revealed.
“Obama had said I could keep my doctor. Now they’re doing away with my doctor. They kicked him out! After 20 years, that’s not right,” said Alfred Gargiulio, who has cerebral palsy and has been seeing the same doctor in Brooklyn since 1993. Nearly 900,000 elderly New Yorkers are enrolled in Advantage plans, which are Medicare HMOs run by private insurers.
Other New Yorkers were floored when they learned they would have to pay 100 percent of the bill if they used a doctor outside their plan’s network — a harsh penalty not imposed by most plans before ObamaCare.
The ObamaCare pain is throbbing in other states, as well. In Florida, at least 300,000 people have lost health coverage. And just one insurer in California, Kaiser Permanente, canceled policies for 150,000 people, CBS News reported.
HealthCare.gov, the online federal exchange, crashed before dawn Sunday and didn’t come back online until 7 a.m. Monday. The outage affected not just the 36 Web sites run by the federal government, but also the 14 sites run by states.
The crash occurred about a week after the administration promised a “tech surge” of the nation’s best computer geeks to fix glitches that have hobbled the Web site since its Oct. 1 launch.
Officials said the site would be fixed by the end of November.
The Department of Health and Human Services blamed the latest crash on an outage of a data-service hub run by Verizon Communication’s Terremark unit.
Other glitches persisted, such as an agonizingly long wait for people trying to set up an account on the Web sites.
“We are committed 24/7 to having our team dedicated to putting those fixes in place and moving forward,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs HealthCare.gov.
Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission from The New York Post.
Questions
1. What promise did President Obama make when attempting to persuade the American people to support ObamaCare? (see videos under "Resources" below)
2. What is the truth about the President's promise?
3. The regulations for ObamaCare were written in 2010. What did the Obama administration know at that time about people losing their health insurance under ObamaCare?
4. The White House Spokesman, or Press Secretary, is the official spokesperson for the president and his policies. The spokesman is responsible for collecting information about actions and events within the president's administration and around the world, and interacting with the media, generally in a daily press briefing. The information includes items such as a summary of the President's schedule for the day, whom the president has seen, or had communication with and the official position of the administration on the news of the day.
How has Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to questions about the President's promise that Americans will be able to keep their current health insurance under ObamaCare?
5. What additional guarantee did Obama spokesperson Jay Carney make for Americans who currently have individual health insurance?
6. What penalty is imposed on individuals who use a doctor outside their health insurance network that was not imposed by most plans before ObamaCare?
7. Ask a parent the following:
a) Do you think ObamaCare will, in the long-run, provide better and more affordable health insurance for Americans? Explain your answer.
b) How will the ObamaCare law affect medical care in general: make it better, worse, or it will have no effect? Explain your answer.
c) Conservatives have suggested that President Obama's goal is to dismantle private health insurance companies, and create a government-run system for health insurance, where everyone would have the same health care through the government (like people on medicare and medicaid do). What do you think of this assertion? Explain your answer.