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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObamacare Is Radically Changing The Individual Insurance Market — And That’s A Very Good Thing
In this atmosphere of doom, this is an article that is worth reading.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/29/2850701/coverage-good-thing/
Reading and watching this mornings news coverage about individuals and families receiving notices that their current health care plans dont meet the minimum requirements of the Affordable Care Act, youd think that insurers have never before cancelled peoples health care coverage. Its as if the the individual health care market had offered substantive and comprehensive insurance before the law came along in 2010 and forced the good and trusted folks at Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna, or United Health to suddenly undo your plan.
So its easy to forget in all the decontextualized reporting why the laws minimum standards were written in the first place and what kind of policies theyre seeking to regulate.
...
Healthy people benefited from a system that denied coverage to the (relatively) sick but only if they never incurred medical expenses themselves. If they fell ill or began incurring substantial cost, companies would find any reason to cancel their plans often by claiming that they failed to reveal a major medical condition. (Theoretically, federal law protects consumers from rescission and policy cancellations that are arbitrary, but companies often do not follow federal standards and instead follow state laws that offer weaker consumer protections.)
...
Remember, this was a system in which more than 60 percent of medical bankruptcies occurred to people who already had insurance: the coverage just wasnt good enough and shifted too much cost to the consumer.
...
So Obamas promise if you like your coverage you can keep it was missing several key caveats. Its true that most individuals enrolled in employer based plans can maintain their policies those plans already meet the new requirements. But for Americans in the individual health care market who have policies that dont provide you with comprehensive insurance or have substantially changed since 2010, the regulations in the Affordable Care Act mean that you will not be able to keep what you have. Instead, youll have to enroll in something better.
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Obamacare Is Radically Changing The Individual Insurance Market — And That’s A Very Good Thing (Original Post)
Mass
Oct 2013
OP
I think Suzanne Somers is more of an authority on this than Think Progress
Capt. Obvious
Oct 2013
#3
Skink
(10,122 posts)1. It's the insurance compnies stupid
Great post
riqster
(13,986 posts)2. ^^^This^^^
Perfectly put:
But for Americans in the individual health care market who have policies that dont provide you with comprehensive insurance or have substantially changed since 2010, the regulations in the Affordable Care Act mean that you will not be able to keep what you have. Instead, youll have to enroll in something better.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)3. I think Suzanne Somers is more of an authority on this than Think Progress
Mass
(27,315 posts)4. Yes, of course.
How can something be socialist and Ponzi scheme at the same time? It seemed to me a Ponzi scheme was perfectly capitalistic.