Posted on 10/31/2013 1:01:01 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The White House is pressuring insurance companies not to speak publicly about Obama administration policies that could eliminate the existing health insurance plans of millions of Americans.
The administration made “clarifications” to the 2010 Affordable Care Act after it was passed that have already wiped out hundreds of thousands of existing health plans.
“Basically, if you speak out, if you’re quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet,” said CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night. Insurance companies executives, Griffin said, ask heads of consulting firms not to criticize the Obamacare rollout debacle publicly.
“They feel defenseless before the White House P.R. team,” Griffin said. “The sources said they fear White House retribution.”
Prior to the Obamacare rollout, insurance companies issued warnings to the White House about the possibility of mass cancellations, which the administration ignored.
Although the mass cancelations are an embarrassment to insurance companies, they are more concerned about losing their biggest customer — the federal government.
“Executives are willing to listen to the White House, because right now, it’s the government that’s the biggest customers of these insurance companies,” Griffin said. “Government-backed plans accounted for about 48 percent of healthcare policies last year, Anderson — a number that’s expected to grow this year, and years to come.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney, however, waved off the allegations.
“That accusation is preposterous and inaccurate,” Carney said. “Plus, it ignores the fact that every day, insurance companies are out talking about the law, in large part because they are trying to reach new customers who will now have new, affordable insurance options available from providers through the new marketplaces.”
Carney’s statement echoed similar remarks Obama made during a Wednesday speech, blaming “bad apple insurers” who tried to rip off customers for the cancelled plans.
The law itself provided protections for healthcare policies in effect on March 23, 2010 onwards with “grandfather” clauses, permitting customers to keep them even if they did not adhere to the new requirements. But the Health and Human Services department stripped away those provisions, writing regulations that eliminated health care plans whose copays, deductibles or benefits changed.
HHS’s unilateral rewrite will eliminate the health insurance plans of up to ten million Americans, NBC News reports. Despite insistent, endlessly repeated assurances from Obama and a supporting cast of Democrats, from before the law’s passage to the 2012 presidential election to the present, the Obama administration knew that millions of healthcare plans would vanish under its regulations.
The online exchanges’ severe systemic flaws have inflamed tensions between the insurance industry and the administration. A group of major insurance executives met with senior White House officials — including senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — last Wednesday in a closed-door meeting, after the rollout of HealthCare.gov demonstrated all the graceful coordination of a multiple-car pileup.
The White House may have increased pressure on insurance companies to keep them operating within the federal exchanges. The companies must back out of the exchanges before Oct. 31 or be locked into them. according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services contract governing the relationship between the companies and the government.
just like they do with everyone else. Hope some company says F U to them. Others will then follow suit.
what did obama kow and when did he know it.
think we have the actual answers.
now let the impeachment proceedings begin.
our federal gov’t has WAY too much power!!
The insurance and health care sector are indeed helpless. I think the best way to really describe it is they are like the Jews being taken to the ovens by WW2 Germans and they have no recourse but to take it one day at a time to live a day longer; but in the end they will get the ovens.
Strong reference, but that IS the way it appears to be IMO.
the reason we have all these problems is the suspension of the judicious use of tar and feathers.
Report: White House exerting ‘massive pressure’ on insurance companies to keep quiet
It’s a very apt comparison, and who knows what the future may hold.
interesting. wonder how many will pull out before then.
and many of our citizens are way too weak complacent and and selfish to challenge it
if these businessmen would stand up for their freedom it would be a wonderful thing
It’s just best if the people don’t know anything that’s going on.
What the future will hold if there is no repeal and throwing out of socialists? That answer is easy.
Death of the best health care system the world has known.
Death of the major pharmaceutical companies that have created many cures or would have created future cures because profit will be banned and government will assimilate that industry as well.
Death of the right to access to a system allowing you to live well into old age.
Death of the right to buy yourself better stuff in health or much of anything else as a reward for your education, hard work, overtime worked daily or through the money you used to save.
Death of the control an individual could have had in life. It is all going to be dead but there will be a few chosen wealthy in the government class.
There will be a death of opportunity for a better life here.
When it gets so bad that even the stupids learn, what will the government class do when the people come for them and get their hands on them. Most dictators and tyrants have an ugly end to them.
I remember going to Tunisia in Africa where a citizen there told me of how the people could not handle anything but dictators because they could not lead their own affairs or themselves anymore. Will America die and “transcend” into that?
It was the WW2 German way long before they called it the Chicago way.
Welcome to communism........
Now there's a threat I'd be worried about.
Somebody better recalibrate that meter.
This level of threat I am also worried about. How many are now afraid of this super large government that was created to originally answer to the people (not the other way around)?
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