How The GOP's 'Keep Your Health Plan' Bill Disrupts Obamacare

[ProSense]

How The GOP's 'Keep Your Health Plan' Bill Disrupts Obamacare

House Republicans have teed up a vote this Friday on legislation aimed at letting Americans hold on to their health insurance plans next year.

The vote on the two-page "Keep Your Health Plan Act," sponsored by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), comes amid a swirl of controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's promise that individuals who liked their policies wouldn't lose them. The president apologized last week to those who have lost their insurance coverage, but maintained that Obamacare fixes major flaws in the system while preserving the status quo to the extent possible.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said the Upton bill would "allow anyone with a health care plan they like to keep it." That's not exactly right. While it would permit insurance companies to continue existing policies -- plans that were in effect as of Jan. 1 of this year -- into 2014 even if they don't meet Obamacare's essential benefits standard, it would not require them to do so. Insurers would still be able to cancel or replace those policies.

Under Upton's bill, if insurers opted to do so, some existing policies outside the insurance exchanges would continue in next year. In short, some people would end up keeping their existing plans and waiting a while longer before buying on the exchanges. That could arguably be good news for the young, affluent individuals who stand to pay more under Obamacare. But it would disrupt the fragile actuarial models of insurers, who have based their range of policy options and premiums on the assumption that those individuals would be participating in the new marketplaces.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/house-gop-upton-obamacare-bill

Pass a law that allows insurance companies to continue selling shitty plans and still allows them to drop people. Screwed squared.

Report: House Dems Need 'Keep Your Health Plan' Fix Before Friday

A senior Democratic aide told the Washington Post's Greg Sargent that without an administrative fix for people who are losing their existing individual health insurance policies -- which the White House is reportedly searching for -- it will be hard to maintain Democratic opposition to a House GOP bill that would seek to solve the problem.

The House is expected to vote Friday on a bill from Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) titled the "Keep Your Health Plan Act." House Democratic leadership has said it would oppose the bill, but, as some Senate Democrats proposed their own fix, the aide told the Washington Post that it might be hard for the House Democratic caucus to hold the line as public pressure to find a fix mounts.

The aide portrayed the endorsement by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) of a similar bill from Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) as making it more difficult for House Democrats to oppose the Upton bill.

“Now that Feinstein has broken off, that makes it even more important that House Democrats stay together as much as possible -- to keep Senate Ds from caving,” the aide told the Post. But the aide adds, in a reference to this week’s House action: ”We need an administrative fix that works before the vote.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-house-dems-need-keep-your-health-plan-fix-before-friday

Oh look, members of Congress lining up to hide behind BS RW talking point.

Cheney: 'I'm Inclined To Agree With Bill Clinton' On Obamacare Promises
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dick-cheney-i-agree-with-clinton-obama-should-keep-healthcare-promise

Boehner Seizes On Clinton Comment Regarding Obama's Insurance Promise
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024021563

House Dem Leaders To Oppose GOP's 'Keep Your Health Plan' Bill

House Democratic leaders will oppose Republican-led legislation that allows insurers to continue insurance policies into 2014 even if they don't meet Obamacare benefit standards, a Democratic leadership aide told TPM.

"The (Fred) Upton legislation would create a new insurance market where people with preexisting conditions would be discriminated against and women would pay more," the aide said. “This bill would increase premiums and undermine the health reform law. While we have not seen final text, the leadership will oppose this legislation as it is the 46th attempt to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act."

Rory Cooper, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), predicted that the bill would win Democratic votes. "Something tells me their members don't feel the same way," he wrote on Twitter, responding to the Democratic aide's comment.

The White House came out against the bill earlier Tuesday afternoon. Read it here.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/house-dem-leaders-to-oppose-gop-s-keep-your-health-plan-bill

[Historic NY]

1. This is not a fix its an end run to undo Obamacare. (ACA)

and the provisions it provides.

[ProSense]

2. And Dems are falling for this crap

Merkley, Feinstein Back Landrieu's Bill To Unwind Obamacare Market Reforms

<...>

Landrieu's office made clear that the senator's intention is not to damage Obamacare. "Sen. Landrieu supports the Affordable Care Act and wants to see it work. To write or suggest that she is undermining it is not correct," her spokesman Matthew Lehner said in an email. On Tuesday, her office touted the fact that Bill Clinton backed the "concept" of the bill.

Notably, the Landrieu legislation goes farther than a House Republican bill aimed at achieving the same goal, which is up for a vote on Friday. The bill, offered by House Energy & Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, would simply allow insurers to continue existing policies through 2014. The Landrieu bill would require them to.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/feinstein-cosponsors-landrieu-s-bill-to-unwind-obamacare-market-reforms

Steve Benen:

<...>

With respect to The Hill, whose reporting I rely on frequently, the piece was a little naive. To think that House Republicans, a month after shutting down the government over a health care law they hate with blinding rage, suddenly want to improve the Affordable Care Act is hard to take seriously. Upton’s Keep Your Health Plan Act is about a partisan game to undermine the law and put Democrats on the defensive – and little else.

The issue started taking on new urgency this week as panicky congressional Democrats, responding to media pressure and widespread confusion, began inching towards support for Upton’s bill (or at least one like it). Even Bill Clinton said yesterday, “I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got” – which delighted Republicans who immediately saw the comments as an endorsement of their plans.

(It was rather ironic to hear the former president make the comments – the reason President Obama made the “you can keep your plan” comments in the first place was due in part to the disaster surrounding Clinton’s plan 20 years ago, which would have upended the coverage of nearly every U.S. consumer, causing a broad public backlash.)

The public debate has started to stagnate a bit, with Republicans and the Beltway obsessing over whether the president “lied” – I tend to think this is a silly accusation, since Obama’s position was more of an oversimplification than an attempt to deceive – and much of the media giving the misleading impression that this is a systemic flaw in the law.

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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-keep-your-health-plan-act

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t

[alc]

4. i'd expect many insurers to drop plans if they can

2013 plans depend on reimbursement rates and provider networks the insurers contracted in 2012. For 2014 they have contracts based on ACA premiums, deductibles and co-pays.

I doubt insurers will want to rush to get non-ACA agreements with all of the providers and many providers won't take it if the reimbursement rates aren't enough. Policies where the insurer is better off with the ACA contracts will be kept while others will be dropped. Even if they come out even they won't want to deal with more types of policies because of the administrative effort/cost.

So this "fix" will still leave lots of people (in number but not percentage) who can't keep their policy. And we'll get a round of media coverage how the ACA isn't even fixable.

[Politicub]

5. Leverage

With the GOP being in control of the house, they have the leverage they need to screw with the ACA as much as they want.

There will be a bill advanced. It will contain poison pills that seek to pull threads from the ACA tapestry. The serfdom that people endure to keep health insurance will stay in place.

In an ideal world, congressional leaders would try to improve upon the bill. But we live in a disgusting hyped partisan world with a GOP with a worldview based solely on destruction.

I hope I'm wrong.

What angers me most is Bill Clinton going on the stump and taking a cheap shot at the president. And for no good reason. It brings to mind the worst aspects of Clinton that revealed themselves during the 90's welfare reform and other pieces of legislation created by the GOP at the time.