Americans in state of shock as 80 million more health insurance cancellations now expected under Obamacare

Friday, December 06, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Obamacare, health insurance, cancellations

(NaturalNews) In the days of Richard Nixon, amidst the chaos and scandal of Watergate, the president uttered this most famous of all political quotes in an interview with the Washington Post, the newspaper that broke the story: "I am not a crook."

Well, of course, it turns out that Nixon may not have been a "crook" in the stereotypical sense, but he damned sure was crooked.

Fast forward to the present time. Nixon's quote has been supplanted by the presidential whopper of the century: President Obama's promise, "If you like your health plan, you can keep it."

As the official Oct. 1 roll-out date for Obamacare came and went, millions of Americans with private health plans were learning that their insurers had to cancel their policies, because they did not comply with minimum coverage requirements mandated in the Affordable Care Act.

Initial reports were that perhaps only about 5 percent of the American people would be affected. That is enough to call Obama's lie a lie.

But it's an even bigger lie than that.

The truth is, the Obama administration's own internal estimates, as recorded in the Federal Register in 2010, projected that tens of millions of Americans would actually lose their coverage. That's because even those with employer-provided plans are affected by the law's minimum coverage requirements.

But what's so disturbing about this is not just that employer plans will have to change, too, but that, in changing to the higher coverage, those plans will become more expensive.

Employees and business owners to lose plans

As reported by Fox News' Jim Angle:

Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could find their coverage canceled because they are not compliant with ObamaCare, several experts predicted.

Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason.

In an interview with the network, Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said that, besides the individual cancellations, "at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well."

About 157 million Americans have employer plans.

"The administration estimated that approximately 78 million Americans with employer sponsored insurance would lose their existing coverage due to the Affordable Care Act," added Avik Roy, a Manhattan Institute fellow who has extensively covered Obamacare for Forbes.

Recently, an AEI analysis found that the administration has estimated that two-thirds of small businesses would either have policies canceled or be compelled to dump workers into Obamacare exchanges. They predicted that as many as 100 million small and large business policies could suffer cancellation next year.

More from Jim Angle:

According to projections the administration itself issued back in July 2010, it was clear officials knew the impact of ObamaCare three years ago.

In fact, according to the Federal Register, its mid-range estimate was that by the end of 2014, 76 percent of small group plans would be cancelled, along with 55 percent of large employer plans.

The reason behind the losses is that current plans don't meet the requirements of ObamaCare, which dictate that each plan must cover a list of essential benefits, whether people want them or not.

Ridiculous coverage requirements, in fact.

Has a man ever had a baby?

"Things like maternity care or acupuncture or extensive drug coverage," said Veuger. "And so now the law is going to force [people] to buy policies that they could have gotten in the past if they wanted to but they chose not to."

Even single men are are required to purchase maternity coverage, by the way.

Already, because of these inane requirements, some plans have already been canceled, and employers are being shocked by the dramatically higher prices for plans.

"One of them is David Allen, president of a company bearing his name in Boulder, Colorado. He told a Congressional hearing recently that his carrier discontinued his company policy because it wasn't compliant with ObamaCare," Angle reported.

"It does not meet the minimum standards as stipulated under the law. Due to this one change, our premiums are now scheduled to increase by 52.3 percent in January 2014," he said.

Roy says this is not abnormal.

"The old plans that are being cancelled are meaningfully cheaper than the new plans that are ObamaCare compliant," he said.

Sources:

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.nationalreview.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com