By TIMOTHY P. CARNEY |
NOVEMBER 14, 2013
The Obama
administration's move today -- offering to ignore yet another part of
Obamacare in an effort to let people keep their health care plans -- strikes me
as a naked attempt to deflect blame to insurers. The
president's partisans will say, "Hey, Obama's not gonna bust any insurers
for selling illegal insurance, so if you're cancelled, blame those evil
insurers!" This is silliness and should be dismissed out
of hand. But there's a more nuanced argument this ploy allows President Obama
to make, and Kevin Drum lays it out nicely at
Mother Jones. In short, Drum argues, insurers (and
Republicans) are blaming Obamacare for plans that would have been cancelled
anyway.....To Read More.....
By BYRON YORK | NOVEMBER 14, 2013
The journalist
Jonathan Cohn, an ardent supporter of Obamacare, recently wrote in The New
Republic that problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act should be
"an opportunity to have a serious conversation about the law's tradeoffs —
the one that should have happened a while ago." Cohn
is right that there was no serious conversation about those tradeoffs back when
Congress was considering the law's passage in 2009 and 2010. But why was that?
It was because President Obama and his Democratic allies could not speak
seriously — and honestly — about those tradeoffs and still pass their bill. So
instead, Obama assured Americans they could keep health care policies they
liked. And it wasn't just Obama. "One of our core principles is that if
you like the health care you have, you can keep it," Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid said in August 2009. "If you like what you have, you can
keep it," said then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October of the same
year.....To Read More....
By PHILIP KLEIN |
NOVEMBER 14, 2013
President
Obama, under fire for breaking his promise that Americans would be allowed to
keep their health care plans if they liked them, today announced what has been
described as an "administrative fix" meant to allow individuals
to maintain their current coverage. But it won't actually solve the problem for
millions of Americans who are losing their current coverage as Obamacare
deadlines loom. Instead, Obama’s
announcement is a desperate attempt to solve his own political problems by
shifting blame. Obama all but admitted
this much when asked during a White House news conference if his announcement
would translate into people being able to keep their coverage.....To Read More...
By Editorial Writer | NOVEMBER 14, 2013
More than two dozen times since 2008, President
Obama said that under Obamacare “if you like your present health insurance
plan, you can keep it. Period.” He made that promise over and over despite
warnings from his senior aides that it could not be kept, despite the clear
text of the law, despite the obvious meaning of regulations issued by the
Secretary of Health and Human Services he appointed, and despite the fact that
he was on video estimating that as many as eight million people would not be
able to “keep it. Period.” So now along
comes Obama to announce an “administrative fix” for the cancellation of health
insurance coverage that millions of people would like to keep. At last count,
an estimated five million people have received cancellation notices and,
notwithstanding Obama’s “fix,” there will be millions more between now and the
November 2014 elections.....To Read More....
Obama outlines insurance fix, says White House 'fumbled' health care
rollout
By BRIAN HUGHES |
NOVEMBER 14, 2013
President
Obama on Thursday announced that insurers could allow Americans whose
health plans were canceled under Obamacare to keep their coverage through 2014,
acknowledging the White House “fumbled the rollout” of his signature domestic
achievement. Saying that he heard the
public's complaints “loud and clear,” the president admitted that the federal
online marketplace had not met expectations and that millions of Americans
subject to insurance cancellations deserved an apology. “This fix won’t solve every problem for every
person but it’s going to help a lot of people,” Obama said from the White House
briefing room. A contrite Obama again
apologized for his repeated promise that consumers would keep their health
coverage under Obamacare. With the law's new requirements, millions of
Americans may be dropped from their plans and forced to seek new coverage,
often at higher costs.....To Read More.....
Senate Democrats waryof Obamacare fix while insurers warn of market destabilization
By SUSAN FERRECHIO
| NOVEMBER 14, 2013
Senate Democrats were huddling privately
Thursday with White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough after President Obama
announced a "fix" for his new health care law
that would allow insurance companies to renew millions of health insurance
plans they canceled as part of their implementation of Obamacare. "It's a
step in the right direction," Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said as she
entered the meeting. Landrieu issued a statement earlier pledging to push ahead
with legislation that would allow the renewal of those canceled plans despite
Obama's proposal, which is similar to Landrieu's plan except that it does not
guarantee that those who lost their coverage can get it back. Obama and Democrats had repeatedly assured
people that they could keep their current insurance when Obamacare began on
Oct. 1. But millions had their policies canceled because the plans did not meet
Obamacare's stricter standards....To Read More....
GOP senators to administration: Don't approve Obamacare
By SUSAN CRABTREE | NOVEMBER 14, 2013
Twenty Republican senators are urging the
Obama administration not to give unions special relief from an Obamacare
tax that other employers, charities and organizations will be forced to pay
under the healthcare law. Most Republicans spent Thursday training their fire
on President
Obama's decision to offer a "fix" to allow individuals to keep
their health plans even if they receive cancellation notices. But a group of
GOP senators chose the same day to speak out against administration plans to
exempt unions from a new Obamacare tax. Nearly two weeks ago, the Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a
final rule that includes an intention to exempt some union insurance plans from
a substantial new tax known as the reinsurance fee.....To Read More.....
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