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Obamacare

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Submitted By lpass
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Another way Americans are facing higher costs is by an aspect of the Affordable Care Act that sets minimum requirements for deductibles, co-pays, services, and total out-of-pockets expenses. Insurance companies are cancelling thousands of existing insurance plans because the policies do not meet the minimum requirements. For example, Florida Blue is terminating about 80% of its individual policies in the state, which amounts to about 300,000 policies. These individuals will have to enroll in new health care plans by Dec 15th so that the policy will take effect on Jan 1st and to avoid the tax penalties.

Obama repeatedly said during in campaign for the ACA “if you had a health insurance plan that you like, then you could keep it.” Then the statement changed to “if you had a health insurance plan that you like, then you can keep it if it complied with the new law.” Last week, President Obama has changed his position again and announced that insurance plans that do not meet the requirements may be able to skate by if the state regulators and the insurers agree. If the states and insurers agree to this, then the adverse selection problem will be even worse. Those who are healthy and happy with their current plan are more likely to stay with it and not buy insurance off the exchange. Also, those that do not qualify for subsidies are less likely to sign up for insurance from the exchanges. This leaves those chronically ill, elderly, and low-income people to sign up for Obamacare and less healthy, young Americans to subsidize their

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