For months, health care insurance providers have been notifying customers that with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act next year, they would need to update their 2014 policies. Many of the companies that used that first notice to ease into dramatic change are following up with the updated cost of the policies demanded by new federal standards.
As people learn of skyrocketing premiums, exhorbitant deductibles and lower coverage percentages, the mainstream media is beginning to take seriously the warnings conservative independent news sources have been sounding for weeks.
One - NBC News and one of the Obama Administration's biggest defenders - unveiled the truth about the Affordable Care Act Monday night. NBC said the Obama Administration knew from 2009 that they were lying to the American public when they said Americans would be able to keep their health care policies and doctors.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock."
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
The Department of Health and Human Services not only wrote regulations that "narrowed" that provision, their regulations signficantly changed the Affordable Care Act, and, some would say, changed the law in a way only a Congressional amendment should be able to change.
But the Obama Administration learned of what the mainstream media was about to communicate with the public Monday night, and they reacted with a vengeance, blaming insurance companies for raising their rates. Insurance companies, Valerie Jarrett ignores below, are forced to cancel and change existing plans that do not match up with ObamaCare regulations.
Monday night, the Obama Administration extended the ObamaCare signup deadline by six weeks. But they did not mention or address the millions of health care policy owners who have been notified they will face fines and penalties if they don't update their personal policies - some that are now 10 times the current cost. Those that are unable to afford the new policies are panicking and trying to figure out exactly what to do.
In the meantime, large corporations and unions are being given an extra year to adapt to changes while individuals have yet to find reprieve.
Conservative Republicans in Congress did all they could to delay or defund the ObamaCare program last month, while moderate Republicans turned on their colleagues and joined with Democrats to move forward with the ObamaCare plan Democrats only voted into law.
