Sara
Mr. Schaper, what "claims" are you talking about? My insurance with the ACA is less, benefits better. Nothing for you to "investigate". But love the Anthem ads here just the same! And I love the Affordable Care Act! Thank you, Democratic Party!
Happy to oblige, Sara:
Jay Berman
I'm 57, healthy, went to exchange, the cheapest, a bronze plan was $455 a month, it will pay 60% of the bill after I surpass the $4500 deductible. This my friends is simply thievery and I won't participate. I want to buy the coverage I want, not what I'm told to (or forced to under threat of the IRS) .. this, is not the America I know, this is some sort of hybrid socialist dictatorship
P. L. of Redondo Beach -
I just got a letter from health insurance company, and my premiums went up.
Ed of Hermosa Beach (and girlfriend)
My health insurance premiums went up three hundred dollars.
E. C. of Gardena:
I have doctor friends who get fined if they do not write out a specific number of prescriptions ever month!
Here's a letter I wrote about an elderly gentleman I met in Manhattan Beach, CA:
Upset with Waxman
Walking down Manhattan Beach Boulevard last month, I met a gentleman who had posted a piece of paper on his minivan.
The white sheet with black letters read: “My insurance was cancelled because of ObamaCare.”
I would have never expected someone to air such a frustrating grievance, but such outrageous outcomes must be shared.
When I discussed the issue, he told me that because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, his insurance coverage was cancelled. His heart doctor had informed him that if the law passed, he would quit his practice.
In 2012, shortly before the June primary, Congressman Henry Waxman admitted in a House budget committee hearing that he did not know that General Motors went bankrupt.
The colleague asking about GM7, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, reminded him: “Well, it did. I am surprised you hadn’t heard about it. It was the second largest bankruptcy in US history, if not the largest.”
Relating how retired teachers’ and police officers’ pension funds were defunded to bail out GM, Mulvaney asked: “Since you supported the bailouts, what would you like to tell them?”
On behalf of every resident of the 33rd Congressional district who is losing his health insurance, or struggling to find a doctor, or paying higher health care premiums because of ObamaCare, Henry Waxman’s signature legislation, I ask the Congressman: “What would you like to tell them?”
To everyone reading, I ask: “What would you like to tell Waxman? What should happen to him in 2014?”
Arthur Christopher Schaper
Torrance
Here's a post on this blog:
IRON WILL
Ed,
Respectfully, don't you have BETTER THINGS TO DO then re-post Media Matters talking points for the progressive mega-cause of ObamaCare?!
Here in my state of RI, HUNDREDS of people have been unable to get healthcare door to poor planning and implimentation. Their are MANY people - whether it be by design or just poor planning - that fall through the cracks thanks to this federal monstronsity...
Respectfully, don't you have BETTER THINGS TO DO then re-post Media Matters talking points for the progressive mega-cause of ObamaCare?!
Here in my state of RI, HUNDREDS of people have been unable to get healthcare door to poor planning and implimentation. Their are MANY people - whether it be by design or just poor planning - that fall through the cracks thanks to this federal monstronsity...
Here's a statement from Assemblyman Mike Chippendale of Rhode Island:
Responding to a telephone inquiry, Chippendale [state assembly member from Johnston. Here's his contact info] commented that as a member of a permanent joint committee on health care oversight, “It became clear to me that it was nothing but smoke and mirrors. This committee had no say on really anything that the lieutenant governor was doing to set up the exchange.”
About the impact of Obamacare on his constituents, Chippendale added:
“Insurance is being dropped. Some of the elderly are starting to see gaps in their Medicare coverage that didn’t exist before, that now suddenly do. Businesses are frantic. They simply cannot afford to put their employees on these very expensive health care plans.”
Despite claims for accessibility and affordability, from rising health care costs to spiraling government debt, the Affordable Care Act’s careless implementation and uncaring implications have exposed that Obama-Care-Less about the health and wealth of Rhode Islanders.
Here's a statement from Democrat Jan Malik:
Cosigning the legislation, Assemblyman Jan Malik (D-Warren) stated: “I just don’t think we can afford it because of the situation we are in right now. Let the feds pay for it.” Making a point that the costs of the state healthcare exchange would increase substantially over the next four years, Malik rejoined: “The issue for me is the dollars and sense. If we could afford it, we should keep it.”
For the record, Malik cosigned legislation which would require the Rhode Island health care exchange be funded only by federal dollars, because the state cannot afford it.
From Amy Gallagher, a benefits manager in Rhode Island:
Go Local Prov Health/Business expert Amy Gallagher works as a benefits administrator, and she had nothing but bad news about Obamacare, citing businesses would face rising premiums beyond the normal 7%. “A defense contract based in Rhode Island will face a 26% hike in health insurance premiums because of this law.” She further commented on other statewide firms which face no other option beyond raising the insurance premiums on their employees just to manage the costs associated with Obamacare. She did not disclose specific names, for fear that those firms would face political retaliation, like losing key contracts with the state.
All my left-leaning, love-to-hate-the-truth trolls, please feel free to read Go Local Prov and Go Local Worcester, you will find lots of great info from me, every Friday!
Thanks!
First, Arthur, MY coverage is cheaper AND it is BETTER than my old group plan. SECOND: as a recently self-employed, pre-existing condition person, I couldn't get my own coverage UNTIL NOW. FACT. So your entire premise is already bullshit. But onward...
ReplyDeleteI've got anecdotes, too, Arthur:
Last summer Ellen Holzman and Meredith Vezina, a married gay couple in San Diego County, got kicked off their long-term Kaiser health plan, for which they'd been paying more than $1,300 a month. The cause wasn't the Affordable Care Act, as far as they knew. They'd been living outside Kaiser's service area, and the health plan had decided to tighten its rules.That's when they discovered the chilly hazards of dependence on the individual health insurance market. When they applied for a replacement policy with Anthem Blue Cross of California, Ellen, 59, disclosed that she might have carpal tunnel syndrome. She wasn't sure--her condition was still being diagnosed by Kaiser when her coverage ended. But the possibility was enough to scare Anthem. "They said, 'We will not insure you because you have a pre-existing condition,'" Holzman recalls.
But they were lucky, thanks to Obamacare. Through Covered California, the state's individual insurance marketplace, they've found a plan through Sharp Healthcare that will cover them both for a total premium of $142 a month, after a government subsidy based on their income. They'll have a higher deductible than Kaiser's but lower co-pays. But their possible savings will be impressive.
"We felt we didn't have to panic, or worry," Holzman says. "If not for the Affordable Care Act, our ability to get insurance would be very limited, if we could get it at all."
Holzman and Vezina are exactly the type of people Obamacare is designed to help--indeed, rescue from the cold, hard world of individual health insurance of the past. That was a world where even an undiagnosed condition might render you uninsurable. Where your insurance could be canceled after you got sick or had an accident. Where your financial health was at risk as much as your physical well-being.
David Shevlino, 51, is an artist in Delaware. Between the COBRA policy that extends the coverage his wife, Kathy, received at a former job and the bare-bones policy that covers himself and their 15-year-old son, they've been laying out $1,000 a month in premiums. Next year they'll pay $650 a month, after the government subsidy, for a plan through Blue Cross of Delaware that covers the entire family and provides many services that have been excluded up to now.
That makes a big difference, especially for Kathy, who is still dealing with injuries she suffered in a cycling accident and that would have made her uninsurable once her COBRA ran out less than a year from now. "She had already been turned down by Aetna and Blue Cross, the very company that will now insure her," Shevlino says. "This is a really significant thing--to me, the fact that insurance companies could turn you down didn't make sense in terms of what healthcare is supposed to be for."
There are many more of these true stories than there are cherry picked, questionable stories like yours, Art. You just refuse to acknowledge them.
Dear so and so, (trying to be polite here) I have had the same insurance for 43 years. I am happy with it. The lovely people that I have had to deal with via phone, have actually saved me money. It is reasonably priced, and covers everything. My daughter has the same insurance for an also reasonable price. In two years, I believe, the price of her plan will be taxed at 40% of its value, to the tune of $28,000. (At about the same time that her oldest will enroll in college. This is company based insurance. There is a whole corporation of young people that are going to face the same tax. So, I'm happy for you, getting a deal while many more are getting screwed. Yeah, real happy for you.
DeleteAnd don't forget to report the Koch Bros lies:
ReplyDeleteLike the tale of one Julie Boonstra of Michigan, wholesaled by the Koch-founded conservative organization Americans for Prosperity. In a political ad being run by AFP against a Democratic senate candidate in Michigan, Boonstra asserts that "Obamacare" has made her leukemia treatment "unaffordable" and "jeopardized" her health.
But when Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post checked out her story, he found it didn't hold up. The Affordable Care Act provided her with cheaper coverage than she had before, while allowing her to keep her doctor and maintain her treatment. Kessler didn't mention it, but Boonstra plainly benefits from another provision of the ACA: the ban on exclusions for preexisting conditions. Patients living in the pre-ACA world of individual health insurance with conditions like leukemia were constantly in danger of losing their coverage and becoming uninsurable. That's not legal anymore.
Boonstra's case is just the latest of a very long line of deflatable horror stories. We've debunked a passel of them here, from Florida resident Diane Barrette, who didn't realize she'd been empowered by the ACA to move from a costly junk insurance plan to a cheaper real insurance plan; to Los Angeles real estate agent Deborah Cavallaro, whose "unaffordable" premiums turned out to be eminently affordable; to San Diego business owner Edie Sundby, whose cancer coverage was safeguarded by Obamacare after her insurer bailed out on her for financial reasons; to "Bette," the supposed victim trotted out by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in her response to the State of the Union message last month, and who turned out to be an ACA "victim" because she couldn't be bothered actually to investigate her options for affordable care on the Washington state enrollment website.
And there are many more, including the extremely dubious personal narratives of House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Tom Coburn.
Do some REAL research, Arthur--you are embarrassing yourself.
A REAL blogger--Kevin Drum reports:
ReplyDeleteLike most human beings, I love it when I turn out to be right. Or even when someone provides evidence that I might be right. So naturally I'm thrilled that a pair of researchers have confirmed my horseback estimate that 1-2 million people may have suffered from canceled policies and rate shock during the introduction of Obamacare.
How did they go about it? Well, it's really hard to use raw number crunching to figure out how many people in the individual health care market had their policies canceled. Clean data just doesn't exist. But there's a way to cut through this Gordian Knot: just ask people. In December 2013, the Health Reform Monitoring Survey did just that, and concluded that about 18.6 percent of those with individual health insurance reported that their policies were no longer being offered to them. The best estimate we have is that about 14 million people had individual policies last year, which means that 2.6 million people faced cancellation:
Many whose non-group policy was cancelled appear to be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid....While our sample size of those with non-group health insurance who report that their plan was cancelled due to ACA compliance is small (N=123), we estimate that over half of this population is likely to be eligible for coverage assistance, mostly through Marketplace subsidies. Consistent with these findings, other work by Urban Institute researchers estimated that slightly more than half of adults with pre-reform nongroup coverage would be eligible for Marketplace subsidies or Medicaid.
So that means about 1.3 million people had their policies canceled and had to pay full freight for a new policy. Since the error bars on this estimate are fairly large, that comes out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 million people. In other words, less than 1 percent of the country, mostly made up of people with incomes that are higher than average.
You can decide for yourself if this is a lot or a little. My own take is that it's pretty modest given that Obamacare probably benefits about 20-30 million people. Any big new piece of policy is going to have winners and losers, and a ratio of 20:1 or so is about as good as it gets in the real world.
The centerpiece of the Republican party's attack on the Affordable Care Act following President Obama's State of the Union address this week was the story of "Bette."
ReplyDeleteBette was an otherwise unidentified Washington state resident featured in the official GOP response to the Obama speech delivered by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). According to Rodgers, Bette had written her a letter stating that she had "hoped the president’s healthcare law would save her money – but found out instead that her premiums were going up nearly $700 a month." The lesson, according to Rodgers: "This law is not working."
Bette has now been tracked down by her hometown Spokane Spokesman-Review. She's Bette Grenier, who owns a small business with her husband. Unsurprisingly, her story is much different from the sketchy description provided by Rodgers. That description perplexed experts, including Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, who couldn't understand how a state resident "would have no choice but to pay $700 per month more for a policy that meets the Affordable Care Act’s coverage requirements," the newspaper reported.
Grenier told the newspaper that she wrote Rodgers after her insurance company informed her that her $552-a-month catastrophic health plan would not be offered in 2014. It offered her an alternative plan complying with the ACA at $1,052 a month.
But that sounds like her insurer trying to steer her to an overpriced option. A compliant plan meeting the Affordable Care Act's coverage mandates actually is available from Washington's insurance exchange for much less -- and with a deductible far lower than the $10,000 she was paying under the old plan and broader coverage, though lacking a provision for four free doctor visits a year provided by her old plan.
Grenier said she had flatly refused to even investigate her options on the exchange. "I wouldn’t go on that Obama website at all,” she said. “We liked our old plan. It worked for us, but they can’t offer it anymore.”
Instead, she and her husband "have decided to go without coverage," the newspaper reported.
Does this make sense? Grenier deliberately decided to forgo the options available to her and her family from the Affordable Care Act, despite the knowledge that they might be more suitable for her than her old insurance or the plan being hawked by her insurer -- she says a friend of hers found a plan for a mere $129 a month.
But her plight has nothing to do with Obamacare. It's a product of her own apparently flawed decision to refuse even to look into the benefits the healthcare law might provide. And it's another sign of how threadbare the GOP criticism of the Affordable Care Act has become. If this is the best they can conjure up for what might be one of the best-watched TV appearances a back-bench Republican congresswoman gets to deliver, shouldn't they give up already?
We have all heard stories of someone who is over 90 and claims they have smoked 2 or 3 packs of cigarettes a day since their teenage years. Should we then remove the health warning off the cigarette pack or should we just say this is an anamoly? It is interesting how the left always attacks the Koch brothers but sees no problem with George Soros the man who destroyed the currency of at least 4 foreign countries. Sounds like Sara is working for Harry Reid or Chucky Schumer. I am sick and tired of the Dems not having a single original thought in their brain other than to spout the Dems talking points. I have been a diabetic for over 40 years and I have never been denied insurance coverage for that pre-existing condition and I have been insured for over 30 years with different companies. This story of this aledged San Diego "couple" is so bogus. She may have coverage now at 10% of the cost but that doesn't mean the plan is cheaper. It just means the taxpayer of the US is picking up the rest of the bill. Just shows you once again how great life can be when Obama plays Santa Clause for some and lets the rest of us pick up the check.
ReplyDelete"I have been a diabetic for over 40 years and I have never been denied insurance coverage for that pre-existing condition and I have been insured for over 30 years with different companies." SO WHAT? You've been in GROUP PLANS, you imbecile. You obviously don't understand an issue that you now are spouting off about. Typical. The issue is people with pre-existing conditions who couldn't get plans on the INDIVIDUAL MARKET. Why not learn something about an issue before making a total asshole out of yourself, genius?
DeleteFrom Covered California Twitter Feed:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/CoveredCA/status/445269537597194240
David Holben @ccnftubadave · 23h
@CoveredCA it has been an arduous process. Hours spent online, Sent in an application, have not heard a thing back. #royalpain #Obamacare
and
Sara Jean Potatoes @sarajeanpotato · 21h
@CoveredCA I signed up over a month ago and haven't gotten any information yet. :(
Took me 15 minutes to sign up and choose a plan. Maybe David Holben has trouble on iTunes, too.
DeleteHow much was the plan? Have you paid the first premiums yet?
DeleteLess than my old group plan. Paid and covered. Thanks for asking.
DeleteMore Comments on Covered California Twitter Feed:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/CoveredCA/status/445628595030228992
David Lehmann @davidlehmann09 · 22h
@CoveredCA @DoloresHuerta a a billion spent on a website and you're still nowhere close to the numbers needed. Maybe its time u realized
and
Kait Kretsinger @babykrets · 22h
@CoveredCA @DoloresHuerta lol yeah if they just stop spending money on other dumb stuff like food, or rent, or electricity
Artie, so you're resigned to posting the remarks of Twitter trolls? Of course you are!!!!
DeleteHere's another:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/confusedabout/status/446015945707102208
D@confusedabout·
@ArthurCSchaper @NObamaChat My wife ins was canceled Oct 2nd. It took 10 weeks & we had to go through private ins broker. Probably 20 calls.
1:11 PM - 18 Mar 2014
https://twitter.com/confusedabout/status/446045742994436096
DeleteAnd then D@confusedabout shared:
@ArthurCSchaper @NObamaChat We paid about 32% more, and our deductibles went from $1,000.00 to $5,000.00.
3:09 PM - 18 Mar 2014
Gee, Artie, some of these anecdotal troll tweets are basically anonymous. Have you vetted them? Or are you just out in the Twittersphere fishing for cranks? Either way, loser, you are awillfully ignorant twit.
DeleteAs Art Schaper takes to Twitter to troll for anti-ACA claims, his heroes the Koch Brothers continue to lie. Let's revisit one of the most infamous liars:
ReplyDeleteThe Detroit News checked out Julie Boonstra’s horror story (you remember Julie, right?) and discovered that she will save a significant amount of money under Obamacare, not spend more.
Boonstra’s old plan cost $1,100 a month in premiums or $13,200 a year, she previously told The News. It didn’t include money she spent on co-pays, prescription drugs and other out-of-pocket expenses.
By contrast, the Blues’ plan premium costs $571 a month or $6,852 for the year. Since out-of-pocket costs are capped at $5,100, including deductibles, the maximum Boonstra would pay this year for all of her cancer treatment is $11,952.
When advised of the details of her Blues’ plan, Boonstra said the idea that it would be cheaper “can’t be true.”
“I personally do not believe that,” Boonstra said.
‘That can’t be true. I don’t believe that.’
This is what Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) looks like.
Of course Americans for Prosperity could have verified this themselves and informed Julie Boonstra that she will save money, but they either chose not to or they chose to lie about it.
Either way, their handiwork means people who were duped by their false ad may go without coverage under false pretense. People will suffer because they’re liars.
Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!
(Right, Art?)
You don't have to troll Twitter for lies, Art---the Koch Bros do it for you!
Good news from El Paso:
ReplyDeleteBefore enrolling for health insurance, Efren Guevara and his wife, Rosa, would go to local health care clinics or the emergency room at the University Medical Center whenever they were sick. The visits were costly, Efren Guevara said. But now that they are enrolled, visits to a specialists will cost them a $50 co-pay, and visits to a doctor will cost them a $30 co-pay. The total cost for their insurance — $18.82 a month for the both of them.
"We are very satisfied," Efren Guevara said. "At first we were having some difficulty signing up, but we were able to make it through. Now with insurance, it's going to be less money out of my pocket."
Fernando Valdez, 25, said he was dragged out of bed early on Saturday by his mother who forced him to wait in line and enroll. Now, Valdez will pay $22 a month for his health insurance.
"I got home at 4 a.m., and here I was at 7:30 a.m.," Valdez said. "My mom made me come here and sign up and we were 80th in line. There were tons of people outside. I was forced to come here — but now I can walk away a covered man, knowing that if I get into an accident I will not be in trouble with trying to find health care."
With three providers and 47 health insurance plans available, the cost also will vary, said Jennifer Buschick, program director for Enroll El Paso.
Ernesto Gonzalez enrolled online and selected a plan that will cost him $145 a month.
"Now, I'm hearing all these low monthly payments and wondering if I should have waited in line with everyone else today," Gonzalez said. "But that's Okay. I've heard other people are paying $500."
Don't lose sight of the meat-and-potatoes, even though the Koch Bros and their minions--like poor, over-his-head Artie here--try to sell you snake-oil:
ReplyDelete• New Health Insurance Marketplaces (AKA Exchanges) allow shoppers to compare Health Plans that include all new benefits, rights and protections.
• Cost assistance to individuals, families and small businesses through the marketplace.
• No annual or lifetime limits on healthcare.
• Insurance companies can't drop you when you are sick or for making a mistake on your application.
• You can't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.
• You have the right to quickly appeal any health insurance company decision.
• You have the right to get an easy-to-understand summary about a health plan’s benefits and coverage.
• Young Adults can stay on their parent's plan until 26.
• A large improvement to women's health services.
• Reforms to the healthcare industry to cut wasteful spending.
• Better care and protections for seniors.
• New preventative Services at no-out-of pocket costs.
• Essential health benefits like emergency care, hospitalization, prescription drugs, and maternity and newborn care must be included on all non-grandfathered plans at no out-of-pocket limit.
• You can't be charged more based on health status or gender.
Ron Chusid writes about how the Koch Bros lies aren't working out so well:
ReplyDeleteRepublicans, lacking any real policies they can campaign on, have been relying on ads based upon lies about the Affordable Care Act. One ad which has received a lot of attention in the Michigan Senate race centered around a cancer patient who claimed her health insurance was unaffordable under Obamacare. Several fact-checkers found that her new policy through the Affordable Care Act was actually saving her at least $1200 per year. The Koch brothers have been funding a number of similarly dishonest ads through Americans for Prosperity. They may have been wasting their money. A new poll has Democrat Gary Peters with a narrow lead over Republican Terri Lynn Land despite a barrage of dishonest ads from Americans for Prosperity.
Talking Points Memo ran a story yesterday claiming that Americans for Prosperity is giving up on these ads but later in the day a spokesman for AFP denied a shift in strategy:
“We are currently on-air with many different types of ads, including personal testimony of Obamacare impact,” AFP spokesman Levi Russell told TPM. “This is the same strategy we’ve been using for 6 months. This does not represent a shift in strategy.”
I’m not surprised. Take away the lies, and the right wing has no argument left. The old system was such as disaster, harming both millions of people and causing harm to the economy. The Republicans have no meaningful alternative. Claims made by the right wing are repeatedly being shown to be false, as with the ads from Americans for Prosperity.
The Affordable Care Act is turning into a major success, providing millions with health insurance coverage and ending the ability of insurance companies to abuse the system by finding ways to sell policies and then avoid paying out. Five million Americans have purchased health coverage through the exchanges, and this number will continue to increase. Millions more are purchasing higher quality coverage directly from insurance companies, benefiting from the expansion of Medicaid, or are now able to be covered on their parents’ insurance until age 26. No longer are people denied coverage, or have their coverage taken away, due to becoming sick or losing their jobs. In addition, Obamacare frees people from the “insurance trap” which forced people who otherwise do not need to work to continue working for insurance coverage, along with other overall benefits to the economy. The Congressional Budget Office Report, frequently distorted by Republicans, showed that the Affordable Care Act will reduce unemployment, help decrease the deficit, and allow more people to leave large corporations to start small businesses, further stimulating the economy.
Meanwhile, Art trolls Twitter looking for more unsubstantiated ACA tales of (alleged) woe, claiming he is "punching back" (hee hee hee)
After all the recent troubles conservatives have had with “Obamacare victims” in attack ads that turned out to be wrong, the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity wouldn’t push its luck with another dubious commercial, would it?
ReplyDeleteOf course it would.
Conservative group Americans for Prosperity launched a $700,000 ad campaign targeting Sen. Mark Pryor (D., Ark.) for his support of the Affordable Care Act. The ad, which will be broadcast statewide beginning Thursday and running for the next three weeks, brings the group’s total spending on the Senate race to more than $1.3 million.
In the ad, a woman identified as Wanda of Marion, Ark., says Blue Cross Blue Shield notified her and her husband that their health coverage would be canceled as of December 2014. “Well now, when somebody tells you if you like it, you can keep it, you believe them,” she says, referring to remarks President Barack Obama made when he was touting the health care law. “But that’s not so in this case.”
It’s worth emphasizing that the pushback against deceptive advertising from the Affordable Care Act’s foes appear to have had some effect – this new AFP spot is more restrained than many of its predecessors. (Unlike the recent Michigan attack, this one doesn’t falsely suggest the health care law will endanger the lives of cancer patients.)
Indeed, it was of great interest to see that this Arkansas spot steers clear of many factual claims that would draw the scrutiny of fact-checkers. The woman in the ad, for example, doesn’t mention whether or not she’s saving money, or whether she’s any worse off than before.
The offensive is more straightforward: Wanda had one health plan and now she’s complaining about getting a new plan. That’s it. That’s the attack.
But as is too often the case with these ads, there are some problems with the basics in the AFP’s new spot.
First, we learned after the ad was launched that neither Wanda nor anyone else in Arkansas is actually having their plans canceled under “Obamacare.”
The problem is that earlier this month, the Arkansas Insurance Department released a bulletin explaining that the state’s insurance providers could follow a recently announced federal change that would allow people with non-compliant plans to stay on them as late as October 2017.
Heather Haywood, a public information manager with the state’s insurance department, elaborated upon the change in an email to The Huffington Post Thursday.
“Insurance carriers sent notifications to consumers that coverage under health policies that did not comply with the ACA, would end December 2014,” Haywood wrote. “Pursuant to the March 5 CCIIO Bulletin – extension of transitional policy through October 1, 2016 – Arkansas Insurance Commissioner [Jay] Bradford issued AID Bulletin 6-2014 extending coverage through October 1, 2016.”
The total number of Arkansans whose health plans have been canceled as a result of the Affordable Care Act? According to the Wall Street Journal’s tally, the answer is zero.
In other words, the premise of this simple attack ad is at odds with reality.
Making matters slightly worse is the larger context. Americans for Prosperity is running this misleading commercial, arguing that the health care reform law is leading to Arkansans losing coverage they may like. At the exact same time, as Brian Beutler noted, Americans for Prosperity is urging state policymakers to take away coverage for Arkansans who have coverage they may like.
The Koch-backed group has been more relentless in its efforts to block the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion than just about any advocacy organization. And in Arkansas, where this ad is on the air, the group pushed hard for the state to reverse its Medicaid expansion, which would have canceled coverage for the 100,000 people who had already signed up in the state.
Brian called this evidence of “incredible chutzpah,” which is putting it mildly.
Heh...wait til you ObamaCare suckers drop dead, and your estate that you thought you were leaving to your kids gets confiscated by the feds like the Medicare suckers are now...remember the Omnibus Act? I bet you don't! It gives states the right to go AGGRESSIVELY after your estate (whatever you think you're leaving to your kids) to pay for what you've cost the state for your health care. And don't think for a second that they won't come after it. And this is after the exorbitant premiums and the exorbitant deductibles you've had to pay.
ReplyDelete