Obama administration tweaked Obamacare grandfathering rules to benefit big business

Monday, November 11, 2013 by: PF Louis
Tags: Obama administration, Obamacare, grandfathering rules

(NaturalNews) The flaps around Obamacare continue. Meanwhile, constantly broken promises and shifting strategies are revealed by those who dare to dig deeper than the surface of this debacle.

A major issue has been grandfathering existing plans that many would prefer to keep during Obamacare's reign. You know, the "you can keep your existing plan" promise.

According to DailyCaller.com (DC), the Obama administration created amendments to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after it had been signed into law in 2010.

Of course, few knew of these amendments, since they have to be read before anyone knows what's in them, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the ACA's passage with "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it...."

The shifting sands of Obamacare's promises

The DC reports that, around a month before ACA's passage, Minority Whip Eric Cantor questioned Obama's claims that Americans would be able to keep their existing plans if they desired. Obama responded that no one would be forced to change insurance plans. Changes would be voluntary in order to get a better deal.

Grandfathering existing plans during Obamacare's initial stage was addressed with amendments to the ACA a few months after ACA passage.

According to DC's selected passages from the Obama administration's Health and Human Services (HHS), grandfathering existing plans was going to force anywhere from just under half to two-thirds of small business plans and individual policy holders to switch to Obamacare "sooner rather than later."

The HHS's reasoning was that individual and small business plans change or are changed often and the changes may violate ACA requirements for grandfathering an existing plan. Apparently, the HHS ignored the fact that some existing insurance plans don't want to be grandfathered, because they can't meet ACA coverage requirements. This was discovered after Obamacare was implemented and the ACA exchange was available for registration.

So far, many individual and small business plan owners have lost their current insurance plans, and what was available in the ACA's exchange options turned out to have better benefits, maybe, but the premium costs were much higher. That is another of Obama's promises broken, by the way.

Most Americans with private insurance are content with plans that do restrict preexisting conditions, because they are free from them. So just enough coverage at an affordable price is the choice of many who pay out of pocket for health insurance.

Just a few months later, in November of 2010, the HHS loosened its grandfathering requirements for large businesses' (over 100 employees): "Today's amendment allows all group health plans to switch insurance companies and shop for the same coverage at a lower cost while maintaining their grandfathered status, so long as the structure of the coverage doesn't violate one of the other rules for maintaining grandfathered plan status."

According to the Daily Caller, the bottom line is that the shifting sands of Obamacare favor big businesses, which is part of the ACA's function. Obamacare is and has always been an insurance industry soft bailout.

It's not socialized medicine. It's ensuring qualified carriers get more customers by forcing individuals and small businesses into even higher premiums than before while tossing a few crumbs to the lowest income levels to supposedly guarantee they get coverage with little or no cost.

Here's Obamacare's only good news: If you have Medicare A or B coverage or are under VA (Veteran's Administration) health coverage plans, you are exempt from ACA requirements. Actually, Medicare B has expanded it's coverage somewhat. So VA and Medicare people don't need to bother with all this Obamacare fuss or worry about tax penalties for not signing up.

Sources for this article include:

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.hhs.gov

http://web.archive.org

http://www.hhs.gov

http://blogs.findlaw.com