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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today released guidance to state insurance commissioners implementing President Obama’s “fix” for people losing their insurance. Not only does it violate the explicit text of Obamacare itself, but it also raises the possibility of insurers getting access to a new pool of bailout funds. As previously reported, the Administration’s latest plan waives many of the costly mandates included in Obamacare that are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2014. The guidance says that these requirements will be waived—in clear violation of the text of the law—for one year for all plans...

Washington, DC – America’s Health Insurance Plans’ (AHIP) President and CEO Karen Ignagni released the following statement on today’s announcement by the administration related to policy cancellations: “Making sure consumers have secure, affordable coverage is health plans' top priority. The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today. “Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers....

Health insurance plans are not pulling any punches when it comes to their frustration with today's White House announcement. This is a statement that Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, just put out: “Making sure consumers have secure, affordable coverage is health plans' top priority. The only reason consumers are getting notices about their current coverage changing is because the ACA requires all policies to cover a broad range of benefits that go beyond what many people choose to purchase today. “Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the...

Some Senate Democrats aren’t fully satisfied with President Barack Obama’s proposed fix to the Affordable Care Act. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also said earlier on Thursday that House Democrats would move their own legislation to address problems with the law that would complement Obama’s solution. As they prepared for a private briefing from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Thursday afternoon, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) indicated that senators may seek legislative relief beyond the one-year extension Obama is offering for people whose health insurance has been cancelled. “We’re moving forward on the...

-snip- The plan will in part call for insurance policies to be renewed for one year for those who already have insurance policies in the individual market, the source said. Also, the source added, insurance companies will be required to notify policyholders of alternative coverage and what benefits they would be losing by keeping their existing plan.

WASHINGTON–President Barack Obama will offer a fix for people facing health insurance policy cancellations as a result of his Obamacare health care law today at 11:35 a.m. ET. Earlier Thursday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi D-Calif., Obama will take action for people whose health insurance policies were cancelled as a result of his Obamacare health care law while House Democrats are also working on a plan. “The president will offer a proposal today is my understanding and we have our own proposal which we think is really good. But we’ll see. And it has to be done in the next...

A live thread for the Clown's lies. See, his poll numbers are in the toilet, so Valerie sends him out.

As Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly angry with the White House over problems with Obamacare — and increasingly uneasy about their individual fortunes heading into 2014 — Colorado Sen. Mark Udall Wednesday became the latest Democratic lawmaker to introduce legislation to change the beleaguered Affordable Care Act... With support building for a plan introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, that would allow people mislead by the president”s promise to keep their plans to actually do so indefinitely, Udall has come up with a scaled down version that would allow policyholders to keep their current plans, being cancelled under...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said after speaking with President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he is “very comfortable” that the administration will solve Obamacare’s problems. Reid wouldn’t say whether or not he will consider any legislation that alters Obamacare until top White House officials come to a Thursday Senate Democratic caucus lunch to explain progress on the law’s disastrous rollout and its troubled website.

Anxious congressional Democrats are threatening to abandon President Obama on a central element of his signature health care law, voicing increasing support for proposals that would allow Americans to retain the health insurance coverage they are losing because of the Affordable Care Act. The dissent comes as a vote looms Friday in the Republican-controlled House on a bill that would allow Americans to keep their existing health coverage through 2014 without penalties. The measure, drafted by Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, is opposed by the White House, which argues...

The troubled launch of Health Care.gov has raised plenty of questions about whether young, healthy people will enroll in coverage—and, if they don't, whether insurance companies will have to raise their premiums or give up on Obama- care's new insurance markets altogether. But the law's authors built in a safety net to help guard against that worst-case scenario. In essence, it's an insurance policy for insurance companies. The backstop is an approach known as the "three R's." And health care experts say that, taken together, the three prongs will help insurers not only grapple with the transition to the new...

House Democrats emerged from a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday morning worn thin from arguing with White House officials over the bumpy rollout of the Affordable Care Act. One source in the room described Democratic lawmakers from across the political spectrum — from moderates in vulnerable districts to progressives in safe seats — as frustrated with the administration in equal measure. They pushed David Simas, the White House deputy senior adviser for communications and strategy, to account for the glitches on the enrollment website and for President Barack Obama’s unfulfilled promise to Americans that if they liked their health insurance policies,...

Amazing stuff via Mediaite. The “Keep Your Plan Act” is Fred Upton’s bill, which Jay Carney spent a few minutes attacking at today’s press briefing because it would make canceled plans available to all consumers, not just the ones who’d been enrolled in those plans before. That would be a disaster for the insurance industry. Healthy people would flee the new, more expensive plans for the resurrected cheaper ones, leaving no one in the new risk pool except sick people with very expensive treatments. That means either heavy losses for insurers, steep premium hikes next year to make up the...

Either version of the law (Upton’s or Landrieu’s) likely creates an adverse selection problem that will further hurt the insurance industry, which let’s recall, was in bed with the administration on Obamacare because of all the new customers that would be required to buy its product. Obamacare has, with an impressive combination of incompetence and irony, seemingly been optimized to create a death spiral. But is it logistically possible for people to keep their plans? For insurance companies to reinstate them? John McCormack at the Weekly Standard: With millions of Americans losing their health insurance because of Obamacare, bills have...

So I am sitting here contemplating some business decisions and doing my forecasting for 2014. Suddenly it occurs to me the insurance companies must have done the same thing and expected a certain amount of customers and revenue relative to each spend. Bit...here it comes....this forecasts are crap since ObamaCare® website doesn't make it easy to acquire a customer and in fact, it impedes utilization. How are the presidents of these companies going to explain their churn and a funnel that operates more like a sieve ?

A blunt critique from Bill Clinton on President Obama's handling of the rocky ObamaCare rollout is prompting the White House to pledge another set of health law fixes -- though in doing so, it could inadvertently build the case for those calling for a delay in the law's implementation. Aside from scrambling to fix the broken HealthCare.gov website, the administration is now trying to deal with the millions of Americans who have received cancellation notices. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the president's team is trying to figure out a way to offer relief to some of...

Before Healthcare.gov’s troubled launch on Oct. 1, the White House estimated nearly 500,000 people would enroll in the Obamacare health exchanges within the first month and an estimated 7 million were expected to gain private coverage by the end of March, when the open-enrollment period is scheduled to end. Now – even before the administration can deliver on its promise to release an official head count of how many people have enrolled for insurance coverage in the first full month of operations – insurance industry analysts on Monday released figures showing the government has signed up a mere fraction of...

It’s not so easy to repair the White House’s broken promise that millions of consumers would be able to keep their insurance coverage under Obamacare, according to several health and insurance industry experts. President Barack Obama apologized Thursday to the Americans who are losing their coverage despite his pledge and has ordered aides to look into options to try to fix the problem. But there are no obvious solutions that would restore their plans without significantly disrupting the insurance market. -snip- The White House is “just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one: our...

Taxpayers will have a choice: settle for single-payer or bail out private insurance, which otherwise won’t survive the ravages of Obamacare. Think back to the fall of 2008. Congress was asked to pass a $700 billion taxpayer bailout for Wall Street. We were told it had to be passed, or else the economy would collapse, perhaps into another Great Depression. House conservatives voted it down. The stock market fell hundreds of points in response. In the ensuing panic, Congress went along and passed the bailout. That bailout, and the insane, nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill passed just a few months...

President Obama loves taking credit for saving the American auto industry and this week a federal audit reveals that the rescue effort has fleeced U.S. taxpayers out of an astounding $9.7 billion. While this may seem inconceivable to most, the numbers don’t lie. The United States Treasury has recorded a $9.7 billion loss on its $49.5 billion bailout of General Motors, according to a report released this week by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Remember the $700 billion boondoggle created to help stabilize the nation’s financial system during the 2008 crisis by purchasing “toxic...