Even as President Barack Obama sold a new health care law in part by
assuring Americans they would be able to keep their insurance plans, his
administration knew that tens of millions of people actually could lose
those their policies.
“If you like your private health insurance
plan, you can keep your plan. Period,” Obama said as he pitched the
plan, the unqualified promise he made repeatedly.
Yet advisers did
say in 2010 that there were large caveats and that anyone whose
insurance plan changed would lose the promised protection of being able
to keep existing plans. And a report in 2010 said that as many as 69
percent of certain employer-based insurance plans would lose that
protection, meaning as many as 41 million people could lose their plans
even if they wanted to keep them and would be forced into other plans.
Another 11 million who bought their own insurance also could lose their
plans. Combined, as many as 52 million Americans could lose or have lost
old insurance plans.
Some or much of that loss of favored
insurance is driven by normal year-to-year changes such as employers
changing plans to save money. And many people could end up with better
plans. But it is not what the president pledged.
....
Obama insisted anew Thursday that the problem is limited to people
who buy their own insurance. “We’re talking about 5 percent of the
population who are in what’s called the individual market. They’re out
there buying health insurance on their own,” he told NBC.
But a
closer examination finds that the number of people who have plans
changing, or have already changed, could be between 34 million to 52
million. That’s because many employer-provided insurance plans also
could change, not just individually purchased insurance plans
Administration
officials decline to say how many employer-sponsored plans could
change. But those numbers could be between 23 million to 41 million,
based on a McClatchy analysis of estimates offered by the Department of
Health and Human Services in June 2010.
Obama aides did
acknowledge around the time the law was enacted in 2010 that some people
could lose their coverage if their plans changed after the law was
passed. Those people would in turn receive what the administration
described as superior coverage. But in the years since the law’s
passage, HHS officials have downplayed that consequence of the
hard-fought law.
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Monday, November 11, 2013
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