Four Pinocchios

[Tunnelcat]

Never has listening to CSPAN been so entertaining. Never has it been so revealing either.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fac ... n/?hpid=z1

I finally found out about that much hidden "grandfathering" clause that has now unpleasantly caught so many people by surprise (not me, yet ). It turns out that in March 23, 2010, when the ACA was signed into law by the president, a little regulation within that law went into effect. When Obama hyped his law in stump speeches all over the country, he kept promising people that they could keep their present coverage. That was true, but not quite.

http://obamacarefacts.com/grandfathered-plans.php

What he didn't tell people, WHICH HE SHOULD HAVE, and which never showed up in the press (I looked at the time), was that if you as an individual changed your plan, IN ANY WAY, AFTER March 23, 2010, you lost your "grandfathering status", but it was a little murky on the details of that that meant when the law went into effect. Now granted, if you plied through the law, you MAY have figured this part out.

Obamacare, allows those without health insurance to get it at an affordable price. There is nothing in the law that encourages businesses to drop employees from existing health care insurance plans – or “grandfathered” plans.

You'll notice that they say specifically "businesses", but nothing about the "insurance companies" themselves. Nor does it indicate if a business changed their plans through their insurance companies after 2010 what would happen to their policies either. But essentially, what Obama, nor his minions, bothered telling people was that this regulation gave insurance companies carte blanche to drop your coverage for you, WHICH THEY CLEARLY KNEW ABOUT BEFORE THEIR POLICY HOLDERS DID. Nice.

And this little regulation was written after the ACA was signed into law. Read page 34560 of the PDF if you're curious.

So putting my tin hat on, I'm guessing back in 2010, after the ACA was signed into law and after that little regulation was slipped in, insurance companies all over the U.S. sent out offers of teaser rates and deductible changes, all in an effort to entice their policy holders to change something, anything, with their policies. That's what my company did, although they did mention that "grandfathering" thing, which did set off my BSdar at the time. So why go to the trouble? Because they knew what most Americans didn't. That they could dump those policy holders come October, 2013 and force them onto the exchange, and as a lot of people have found out, mostly individuals, into paying higher rates.

[woodchip]

Well guess what TC, my plan hasn't changed in 10 years and I still got a discontinued letter from Blue Cross.

[Tunnelcat]

I edited my post. It gets worse. The regulation was added in June of 2010, after the law was signed. Go read the PDF, page 24, or 35460 of the document, and you'll probably figure out why. The insurance company changed something FOR you. You didn't have to do anything to get dumped. I'm suspecting that I never fell into that hole, but there's no reason my company wouldn't do it to me in the future.

[woodchip]

Well I coming to the conclusion that the insurance companies are loving Obamacare. They get to triple their rates and if you can't afford to pay them they get the govt subsidies. I'd like to look at there bottom line a year from. And who'd a ever thought TC and I would be agreeing on the same thing...

[Tunnelcat]

Well I coming to the conclusion that the insurance companies are loving Obamacare. They get to triple their rates and if you can't afford to pay them they get the govt subsidies. I'd like to look at there bottom line a year from. And who'd a ever thought TC and I would be agreeing on the same thing...

Of course they do. It's a windfall for the private sector and a screw job for the government and taxpayer. I didn't like the ACA idea back then and I still don't. The law privatizes risk and makes the profit public and does nothing to reign in costs. Now everybody gets screwed who's not part of an insurance company and their profits. I don't know what the hell the Dems were thinking when they wrote the ACA in the first place, but it's a rat's nest of a mess, and I'm still postulating that the Republicans that helped write the law put those bombs in on purpose and pulled the wool over the clueless Dems eyes to do it. Now the Dems are lying to hide that hairball of a mess. They really need to remember the chapters on lying from Clinton and Nixon, it's the lie that sinks you, not the original sin.

[callmeslick]

Well guess what TC, my plan hasn't changed in 10 years and I still got a discontinued letter from Blue Cross.

then, you're prior plan has sucked for at least 10 years.

[callmeslick]

Well I coming to the conclusion that the insurance companies are loving Obamacare. They get to triple their rates and if you can't afford to pay them they get the govt subsidies. I'd like to look at there bottom line a year from. And who'd a ever thought TC and I would be agreeing on the same thing...

that is the exact beef that most on the left have been positing for years. This compromise legislation was a gift to insurers, if you didn't put a government insured option in there(the GOP killed that). Another group it is a gift to is Medical Device manufacturers, who have, despite that fact, been campaigning to get a 2% tax removed from the law. Despite this scary burden, the same companies are telling the investment community that they expect a 20% revenue and profit jump for 2014.

[Tunnelcat]

The Dems were snookered, like usual. They should've stuck to their guns and tried for an SP system. Not likely, but better than our present insurance-for-profit-that-screws-the-patient hairball. They could have gone to any number of other countries for a decent model too, instead of what they came up with.

[Tunnelcat]

Well guess what TC, my plan hasn't changed in 10 years and I still got a discontinued letter from Blue Cross.

then, you're prior plan has sucked for at least 10 years.

Probably because his plan was too cheap for years. They wanted more money, simple.

[callmeslick]

The Dems were snookered, like usual. They should've stuck to their guns and tried for an SP system. Not likely, but better than our present insurance-for-profit-that-screws-the-patient hairball. They could have gone to any number of other countries for a decent model too, instead of what they came up with.

much like the idea of 'sticking to the guns' for the loony right that we just went through, that would have been an exercise in futility. No one that I know of, nor have talked to, seemed to be 'snookered'.....they knew they got the best they could and that was why the insurance lobby didn't fight it like they did Hillary's plan in 2004.

[Tunnelcat]

Close enough to a snookering for me. They compromised their ideals to get something passed, and even that is onerous to Republicans. TheDems made a bad deal and are now trying to sugarcoat it. Kind of like the bad deals Clinton made with Gingrich. The Dems need to come clean, the law's a mess created by a committee that didn't have the same goals in mind.

Speaking of how well the ACA is working, how can we judge how well something's working when we can't even measure it? Sebelius couldn't even give the committee the numbers of people who have TRIED to access the government's website, let alone actually succeeded. Our own CoverOregon site is not signing up people because the Federal site's income verification part doesn't work at all.

[woodchip]

Well guess what TC, my plan hasn't changed in 10 years and I still got a discontinued letter from Blue Cross.

then, you're prior plan has sucked for at least 10 years.

Right. I'm thankful that my sucky plan was in effect when I had my Mitral Valve repaired and got to pick a surgeon who was the Chief of cardiac surgery at one of the top hospitals in the country. It was so sucky that I didn't even have to consider going off shore someplace.

[Tunnelcat]

So why do you get that choice when not everyone can get that choice? Why are you so special?

[woodchip]

Oh and TC, lets not even start to throw the republicans in as a party who wrote carious onerous parts of the bill. This was the Dems ball game with no discussion on a bi-partisan deal. If the repub. had a hand in it then at least Pelosi wouldn't of had to make her infamous statement about the bill.

[woodchip]

So why do you get that choice when not everyone can get that choice? Why are you so special?

Because my plan is a PPO and any hospital that takes Blue Cross (and most all of them do) I can go to.

[Tunnelcat]

Oh and TC, lets not even start to throw the republicans in as a party who wrote carious onerous parts of the bill. This was the Dems ball game with no discussion on a bi-partisan deal. If the repub. had a hand in it then at least Pelosi wouldn't of had to make her infamous statement about the bill.

The Dems certainly wouldn't have wanted that little regulation. It stinks of Republicanism down to it core, because it gave insurance companies the ability to dump low premium plans in favor of higher premium plans in order to..........MAKE MORE MONEY. It's a private enterprise windfall, not something any self-respecting liberal policymaker would want. But you're right, I'm guessing from past experiences.

So why do you get that choice when not everyone can get that choice? Why are you so special?

Because my plan is a PPO and any hospital that takes Blue Cross (and most all of them do) I can go to.

That's not what I'm asking. Your plan was obviously cheap enough, or special enough, to warrant it being dropped for some reason. Why should YOU get to keep a cheaper PPO plan than anyone else in your age group? Because you have money? If you have the money, why not buy a better plan? That's what Republicans wanted when they gave everyone "choices" in the ACA.

[woodchip]

I think you have to get away from it's "what the republicans wanted". As far as I can tell they were not included in the drafting of it and if memory serves they all voted against it. Let me know if I'm wrong by citing something other than a left wing blog.

[snoopy]

The Dems certainly wouldn't have wanted that little regulation. It stinks of Republicanism down to it core, because it gave insurance companies the ability to dump low premium plans in favor of higher premium plans in order to..........MAKE MORE MONEY. It's a private enterprise windfall, not something any self-respecting liberal policymaker would want. But you're right, I'm guessing from past experiences.

The sad part about this is that I can see the media grabbing this idea, running with it regardless of facts, and the sheeple buying all of it. You'd think it would be a tough sell with all of the temper tantrums that the right wingers have been having about how much they hate the bill... but I believe in the media and the sheeple, they can do it!

TC, your problem is assuming that anyone in Washington is "self-respecting."

[Will Robinson]

The ACA dictates a wide range of coverage that makes most peoples existing plans incompatible with the new law.
The coming result of that was known to anyone who wrote or read the law.
Oh yea....they had to pass it before they could let anyone know what was in it...so it passed and then what? No one looked? 'What does it matter!?!?' right?
Obama says someone slipped it into the law when he wasn't looking.

And someone else spied on the world when he wasn't looking.

And the reason he had to get a new dog is because the other one ate half of the homework in the north east last semester and exploded.

And the shovels were NOT in the whitehouse garage where GW Bush told him they would be so all those jobs Obama had lined up with his laser focus on the economy just went undone...

And the cost for ACA was supposed to be half of what it is...and he is still trying to figure out how Darth Cheney and the other Sith Lords pulled that off....but as soon as he does he will be sure to point the finger at them!

[Tunnelcat]

The Dems certainly wouldn't have wanted that little regulation. It stinks of Republicanism down to it core, because it gave insurance companies the ability to dump low premium plans in favor of higher premium plans in order to..........MAKE MORE MONEY. It's a private enterprise windfall, not something any self-respecting liberal policymaker would want. But you're right, I'm guessing from past experiences.

The sad part about this is that I can see the media grabbing this idea, running with it regardless of facts, and the sheeple buying all of it. You'd think it would be a tough sell with all of the temper tantrums that the right wingers have been having about how much they hate the bill... but I believe in the media and the sheeple, they can do it!

TC, your problem is assuming that anyone in Washington is "self-respecting."

You're probably right. Self-serving is more like it.

[Tunnelcat]

I did my own calculations on what I now pay this year verses last year. I'm surprised I wasn't dumped off of my grandfathered plan. It turns out that my premium costs rose over 5%, which was one of the reasons listed for getting an individual's plan dumped because of that little known, later added, ACA regulation.

More info. for woody and CUDA.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/five-reas ... 54827.html