Posted on 11/14/2013 10:51:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
[Big SNIP]
Here's how Robert Laszewksi, an insurance consultant, put it in a note to clients earlier this morning:
This means that the insurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer systems for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to the policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and Obamacare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision and give them a reasonable time to make that decision and then enter those decisions back into their systems without creating massive billing, claim payment, and provider eligibility list mistakes.
All by January 1.
There's also worry, among health policy wonks, that allowing people to stay on these plans will be bad for the new insurance marketplaces. Anyone who enrolls in one of these pre-Obamacare plans will be kept in a separate "risk pool," meaning that their premiums are set based on their smaller group. Everyone who buys an Obamacare-compliant plan is put in a different risk pool.
The concern here is that healthier people are more likely to stay in these pre-Obamacare plans; they're probably more okay with a skimpier benefit package. And that could drive up premiums in the new Obamacare markets. A short-term fix, in other words, could become a longer-term problem for the president's health-care law.
"This puts the insurance companies," Laszewski writes, "who have successfully complied with the law, in a hell of a mess."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Oh man the chaos.
A shame some of us who never asked for it have to weather this chaos too.
What, these evil people expected the Republicans to ride in and save them with an injection of sanity?
Well this time, they didn’t.
So it’s up to Democrats to come up with their own sanity fixes... and they CAN’T! They are too mired in evil to come up with anything sane!
Ah, a perfect, perfect, perfect storm.
At some point, yes Republicans will need to act. Shoot, I say why not go ahead even now and feed in fixes that are not twiddles, but bald neutralization of various aspects of Bummercare. Whether it’s repealed in pieces or as the whole thing, it is a stink that the people will insist be made gone.
I think it’s too late. I don’t think the blame would stick on the insurance companies. I think Obama keeps the blame.
Now what it might do, is allow Obama to say, hey when we realized there was a problem we tried. I didn’t know it was too late for them to do anything about it.
I think it’s too late. I don’t think the blame would stick on the insurance companies. I think Obama keeps the blame.
Now what it might do, is allow Obama to say, hey when we realized there was a problem we tried. I didn’t know it was too late for them to do anything about it.
The problem now that EVERYONE realizes that Obama is an idiot is that pols in DC on both sides are still trying to play it for political advantage. Forget that, get your best minds together, and figure out how to get rid of Obamacare. Is that asking too much in this time of extreme crisis, with Obama still doing stuff to make it even worse?
“....As Richard Baehr put it:
Since policies on exchanges assumed (at least in insurance company minds) that their policyholders would shift, they now have to re-price both the old policies which they had abandoned and the new ones. In the time frame involved — by December 15 — this is IMPOSSIBLE!
This fix is designed to fix nothing, but just look like a fix. Insurance companies can decide to stick with their cancellations and they become the bad guys. In essence, this is design of the fix: shift blame. If the insurance companies decide to reoffer old policies, which could be very costly at this point, insurance commissioners in Democratic states, who understand the impact of fewer enrollees on the exchanges, can override the administration fix, and force people to move to exchanges.
My guess is few if any insurance companies will reoffer old policies. I like the Landrieu bill better than Upton, since it is mandatory, and effectively guarantees first year failure of Obamacare. Of course it is financially harmful to insurance companies, but they at least are not bad guys for refusing Obama’s fix. The people in the White House are not real brainy, if this is the best they can do.
Ed Lasky adds:
They are tying themselves into knots. Why can’t uninsured people get the presumably better deals being offered by private insurance companies to old customers?.....
Well when the people realize what a precious thing this presumptuous big eared clown and his sycophants so crudely monkeyed around with... bringing it to a crash....
They might actually hate him and the sycophants.
Poor dears!
Barry was pretty slick today.
But it’s still a house of cards based on lies.
I guess the only questions is - did he buy enough time to get the dims through the elections?
The insurance companies are the wild-card. Now that they’ve been betrayed, they may decide not to play ball with him. They can now jack up their rates and blame HIM. And I don’t think continually vilifying them will work either - because ultimately he will need them.
And there’s another problem with what he did today - he just cut a lot of the revenue he needs to sustain his program.
Basically, he plugged a hole in the dam with a piece of gum.
it would be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic that half the population voted for this and he will have 50%+ approval rating by springtime and we will be going through the same thing at least once before the next elections.
So, apparently Obama can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, no matter what the Congressional law says? Don’t dictators do that?
Still, Obama will just do what Obama does until he is challenged in court, which no one has the cojones to do.
What I REALLY want to know is why Obama is allowing these “rotten apple insurance” companies to continue their supposed “substandard” and “garbage” policies.
The OTHER thing I’d really like to know is if this is all the greedy insurance companies fault for cancelling these “substandard” and “garbage” policies in the first place as Obama has claimed, then why is it REQUIRED that Obama
ALLOW them to reinstate them?
BTW, anybody that’s been paying attention knows this isn’t a “fix” for Obamacare at all, but is simply a “fix” to try and stem Congressional democrats fleeing from Obama.
Also, anybody that’s been paying attention knows there’s simply no way these “inferior” policies can be “re-instated”, especially before 1/1/2014. This is simply another desperation patch being put on a fundamentally unworkable program because the public is getting its first glimpse of what Obamacare is really all about, and they are NOT liking it!
There will be more and more of these patches each and every time the public finds out the next horrible thing about Obamacare, and every patch is simply going to make the whole thing more and more unworkable, until eventually the whole thing comes crashing down like a house of cards.
Really, the only real solution is to repeal Obamacare and start over with REAL health care reform, not some socialist redistribution scheme disguised as health care reform.
I say the GOP needs to get its guns out and methodically shoot it to pieces.
Send bills out that will neutralize this and that and the other... all to wild public acceptance... until the stub is such a ridiculous, unsustainable, purposeless bullet riddled edifice that it will be swept away by any blind fool.
Well if you lack an axe to cut down a tree but you do have a powerful machine gun, you can shoot it down. In pieces. And for us rednecks that is fun.
good analogy -— I would only add that the last plans that you brought to your contractor won’t pass code and you tell him no worries-—ignore the law.
Yes, that does make it more accurate. By telling ins companies to re-create policies and the risk pools they were in is like stipulating to the contractor that he uses wood from a tree that only exists on planet Pandora.
All of which is to say that all of the chips have been placed on Obamas administrative fix. Thats probably the only fix were getting, and the rest of the machinations among Dems are probably going to amount to little more than noise and posturing. Indeed, even Obamas fix, if insurers dont play along, is probably not going to be a major factor.
So were back where weve always been: All that really matters is whether the law works over the long haul, and the fate of Dem lawmakers is heavily bound up in that outcome. Dems should probably just resign themselves to that political reality and do all they can to make the law a success, and to communicate to constituents that patience and a long view are necessary."
Of course they won't. Every failure of the five-year plan needs wreckers to take the blame, Obamacare is no different.
What was the rate of my policy in 2013? What is the rate of my policy in 2014 if the policy didn’t change?
Send out new policies with the new rates, omitting all the Obamacare regulations.
The delay should be till January 20, 2017. Force this on all candidates running in the national election. Make it a litmus test for the Republicans.
Force them to say whether they will repeal or not and would they give up their right on being recalled if they lie.
Obama forgot the “You can keep your doctor, period” part.
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