Visualize this if you will. You’re paying $200 per month for a used car, and though you are happy at the moment, you don’t know that you’ve been ripped off. The engine, the brakes and the transmission are all about to fail, and the dealer has an escape cause built into your warranty, so he won’t honor it. Now, let’s say someone comes along, takes your car, and gives you another that is in good repair and has a solid warranty for $205 per month. Wouldn’t you say you were better off? Those cancelled health insurance policies are much the same, but Republicans are calling the solution a rip-off.
A new controversy over the president’s health-care law is threatening to overshadow the messy launch of its Web site: Notices are going out to hundreds of thousands of Americans informing them that their health insurance policies are being canceled as of Dec. 31.
The notices appear to contradict President Obama’s promise that despite the changes resulting from the law, Americans can keep their health insurance if they like it. Republicans have seized on the cancellations as evidence that the law is flawed and the president has been less than forthright in describing its impact.
“The real problem is that people weren’t told the truth,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Tuesday on “CBS This Morning.” “You can remember, they were told that they would be able to keep their policies if they liked them. Now you hear hundreds of thousands of people across the country being told they couldn’t.”…
Inserted from <Washington Post>
Lawrence O’Donnell provided excellent coverage of this controversy. (International readers, if you can’t view this. try searching YouTube or Bing Videos for Lawrence O’Donnell “Health Care: Campaigning or Governing”. If not there by the time I post this, it should be in a day or two.)
Here’s the bottom line. If your health care policy is such a rip-off that it fails to meet the bare minimum standards that ObamaCare requires, and since ObamaCare is forcing your company to meet those bare minimum standards, ObamaCare is doing you a BIG favor. It is preventing you from getting sick and discovering that you don’t have the coverage you thought you do. Even the insurance companies cancelling policies say they will move customers into better policies that do meet the ObamaCare standards. However, some companies are trying to switch people into their most expensive product without informing them that they have less expensive policies that meet the standards. Republicans are bitching about it, because it interferes with their RepubliCare plan: pay or die.
17 Responses to “About Those Cancelled Policies”
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President Obama is taking a lot of flack for all the wrong reasons. He didn't cancel anyone's policy. And, the policies are still in effect until the end of the year. The way the RepubliThugs are spinning it is that you are not covered at all as of NOW.
Misinformation or not enough factual information is a very bad thing.
I agree, patty.
Lordy, Lordy, I'm sick of all the lies, misdirections and outright crap coming from the Rethugs. I hope it all comes back and bites them in their big bloated butts…you know, where their brains are.
There brains used to be there, but that was before the flush. 😉
Many people have been caught out by the small print in insurance policies before now – you'd think they would understand that their healthcare policies were only being cancelled if they weren't up to standard…. but maybe not. Sigh!
Republicans have spread so much fear that people are confused.
Poor, poor Insurance Companies..having to meet Standards & Practices that CONgre$$ Doesn't???!!! It must HURT enough it makes them Sick! RepubliCONs just don't Understand the point at all.
It gives them pain where it hurts most: in the corporate wallet.
TalkingPointsMemo has an EXCELLENT chart document the actual impact of ObamaCare based on data from MIT Economist. Followed the links in the article to get to "The New Yorker" piece covering the MIT data:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chart-winners-and-losers-from-obamacare
Thanks, I shared this chart on Facebook. Too many only hear the news and don't know how it will affect them.
Good chart Nameless, but I disagree with. Many of the 80% he says are uneffected are positively effected, because their work policies will now cover preventive care, birtc control, mental health, and other things they may not have covered before.
If you want to keep your over priced insurance that doesn't cover $hit, you can keep it….
Bingo, Richard.
There is a point here: Whatever happened to taking responsibility for your own affairs?
First of all, why are people not asking questions instead of jumping up and down and holding their breathe? If I had been informed that my plan was no longer available, I'd be asking 1) Why? 2) How much is a similar plan that provides the same coverage? and 3) If the premiums are too high, I would ask: Is there anything cheaper? To me this is common sense and me taking responsibility for my own health coverage.
Second, "Republicans are bitching about it" is par for the course. The Republicanus/Teabaggers will bitch about anything that Mr Obama proposes, accentuating any perceived negative, true or not. The Republicanus/Teabaggers go on and on ad nauseam about 'personal responsibility' (for anything) until something like this happens and then they crank up the rhetoric, changing away from personal responsibility.
Republicanus/Teabaggers have obstructed healthcare reform from the get go. They have been the author of misinformation and lies; they have tried to repeal the ACA 43 times; they have been vocal on the systems problems; and now this. The responsible thing for the Republicanus/Teabaggers to do would be to get with the plan for the good of the people. But you know, like I do, that they won't because they are a bunch of pansy-assed whiners.
In the atmopsphere of fear Republicans have created, people panic. Also, that there are any Republicans in office proves that a lot of folks just aren't really bright!
The news media is part of the problem. A simple explanation would have sufficed, but too many are busy pointing fingers and giving the GOP free press.
All stations have to some extent.