Posted on 04/08/2014 6:00:02 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.
"It's all closed down. You cannot buy a policy that is a qualified policy for the purpose of the ACA (the Affordable Care Act) until next year on January 1," says John DiVito, president of Flexbenefit which has 2,500 brokers.
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas adds, "People are not going to be able to buy individual and family policies, and that's part of ObamaCare. And what makes it so surprising is the whole point of ObamaCare was to encourage people to get insurance, and now the market has been completely closed down for the next seven months."
That means that with few exceptions, tens of millions of people will be locked out of the health insurance market for the rest of this year.
Only about one in four subsidy-eligible people signed up for health insurance," says Robert Laszewski of Health Policy Associates. "That means about 13 million subsidy-eligible people have not yet signed up for health insurance."
Add to that millions more who waited, or thought the policies under ObamaCare were too expensive and decided just to pay the tax penalty.
Although those who failed to buy insurance during the enrollment period could face a government penalty, most will not have to pay that penalty until they do their taxes next year.
In all likelihood," says Laszewski, "we've only signed up somewhere between one in five and one in seven people who were uninsured prior to the start of ObamaCare."
That means millions are left outside the health insurance market...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is like getting a new car and having to wait until the next “open enrollment” to be able to buy auto insurance.
This is how the gov’t provided health insurance works for civil service workers. Open enrollment is a few weeks at the end of the year unless there is a significant change, birth, new spouse, etc.
The GOPe is boldly tinkering around the edges of this POS.
A year ago you could buy health insurance year round. Now you can’t with the No ACA law.
While I can understand those companies in the exchanges would limit enrollment, a private insurance company should still be able to sell you a policy...no?
This really doesn’t make much sense.
They give a few life event exceptions, but they are the downward mobile kind. What if you signed up for 0bamacare and your life improves...and you no longer need the subsidies? Under 0-care you have to pay back the subsidy, but what if you wanted to change horses midstream and buy your own policy?
What kind of business model has sales people working three months of the year? These agents will have nothing to do for 9 months now ?!
Stupid
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Oh no, they will be very busy mailing out voter registration cards with Democrat checked off, and busing “voters” from poling place to poling place.
It has been typical of all kinds of group-coverage health insurance policies to have open and closed enrollment periods. It was like that even back in the 80s and 90s when I worked. Here, the "group" is those who apply through the exchange.
I haven't read much about and don't understand why this is affecting out-of-exchange private individual policies, however.
Experience with BC yesterday makes me want to cancel Mondays. Four patients of my doctor clients have Obamacare/Exchange coverage. On one patient we have been paid for one out of 12 separate visits thus far this year. None on the rest. Spent 6 hours on the phone. What did I learn? 30-60 more working days to process claims and my doctors paid - that’s 6 to 12 weeks. Obamacare/Exchange claims must be processed and paid by hand and there is a huge backlog.
What we did receive though was a substantial penalty payment from the carrier because they weren’t processed within 45 days of the claim receipt as required by our state law, even though the claims themselves haven’t been paid.
By contrast, BC claims for Federal employees are paid within 3 working days and for everyone else who has regular group insurance it’s 4 working days. All non-Obamacare/Exchange is totally electronic, from the submission of the claim to the money in the bank.
Has to be a real cash flow problem for doctors and hospitals that are heavy into the Obamacare side.
I guess they are selling only ACA-compliant qualified plans only now. Ain't that the pits.
Anyway, a pdf of eligibility events that let you purchase a plan outside of the open enrollment window:
Obamacare pretty much includes something bad in it for everyone.
Now that you mention it, my auto insurance has gone wobbly the last two months. State Farm, Austin.
So now we’re Waiting in line for insurance?
I thought waiting in line at the E.R. was the original “problem” to be social engineered away with all this.
All these new “Rights” to - um - wait around.........
Hope nobody gets sick.
its the Cancelled Affordable Care Act - CACA for short.LMAO, post of the week.
It’s like buying a car in the old Soviet Union. The wait time was quite long for bad product.
This is the same logic of enrollment periods for Medicare Advantage and Part D. Since the insurance is guaranteed issue this lowers the chances of purchase upon need,
Actually the deadline was extended to April 15th.
Still another week for them to pad the fake numbers!
To kill of the insurnce companies perhaps? If a private insurance company can't write any policies for the next 7 months, what happens to them?
Yeah, but if you are a government employee, you’ve had a very obvious opportunity to get insured when you start employment. And, yes, similar things happen under Medicare—in that you can’t switch policies or coverages in between the annual update months.
But, here we are at the start of a program, with a less stable, younger and uninsured populace. This is more of the stick side of carrot and stick. Carrot is LeBron James and Hollywood useful idiots and Obama joking and pushing insurance. Stick is “you missed your chance, and we’ll show you—your uncovered until our next deadline.”
But these enrollment periods are split across 4 quarters. My wife’s policy ends 6/30 each year. The enrollment options are from 4/1 until near 6/30. So a smart management companies split them across four quarters for exactly staffing reasons.
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