The Daily Caller – by Sarah Hurtubise
President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific.
“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.
But as Obamacare’s rollout approaches, we have learned this is not true. Here are the ten states where consumers may like their health care plans, but they won’t be able to keep them.
1) California: 58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. The first bomb dropped in California with a mass exodus from the most populated state’s Obamacare exchange. Aetna, the country’s largest insurer, left first in July and was closely followed by UnitedHealth. Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of California’s Obamacare exchange forsmall businesses as well.
Fifty-four percent of Californians expect to lose their coverage, according to an August poll.
2) Missouri: Patients of the state’s largest hospital system — which spans 13 hospitals including the St. Louis Children’s Hospital — will not be covered by the largest insurer on Obamacare exchanges, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield. Anthem covers 79,000 patients in Missouri who may seek subsidies on Obamacare exchanges, but won’t be able to see any doctors in the BJC HealthCare system.
3) Connecticut: Aetna, the third largest insurer in the nation, won’t offer insurance on the Obamacare exchange in its own home
state, where it was founded in 1850. The reason? “We believe the modification to the rates filed by Aetna will not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans and meet the service expectations of our customers,” said Aetna spokesman Susan Millerick.
4) Maryland: 13,000 individuals covered by Aetna and its recently-purchased Coventry Health Care won’t be able to keep their insurance plans if they want Obamacare subsidies on the exchanges. Aetna and Coventry canceled plans to offer insurance in the exchange when state officials wouldn’t allow them to charge premiums high enough to cover costs.
5) South Carolina: 28,000 people were insured by Medical Mutual of Ohio, SC’s second-largest insurance company, until it decided to leave the state entirely in July due to Obamacare’s “vast and quite complex” new regulations. Company spokesman Ed Byers said Medical Mutual’s patients would be switched over to United Healthcare plans instead.
6) New York: Aetna pulled out of New York’s exchange in late August in an effort to keep their plans “financially viable,” said Aetna spokeswoman Cynthia Michener.
7) New Jersey: 1.1 million Aetna customers are at risk in New Jersey, where the leading insurer also won’t be a part of the exchange. Just 2,600 patients purchase individual plans with the company, but any looking to take advantage of subsidies on the exchange for unaffordable employer-based insurance won’t be able to do with Aetna.
8) Iowa: Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Iowa’s largest health insurer, decided not to offer plans in the Obamacare exchange. It sells 86 percent of Iowa’s individual health insurance plans.
9) Wisconsin: Two of the three largest insurers in the state won’t offer plans on the exchange. United Healthcare and Humana patients will have to get a new health insurer to buy insurance on Obamacare exchanges.
10) Georgia: Just five insurers are participating in Georgia’s Obamacare exchange. Medical Mutual of Ohio left Georgia and Indiana as well as South Carolina, due to Obamacare regulations. Aetna, along with Coventry, also decided against participating in the George health exchange.
Um, how many “hundreds” of millions of Americans are there anyway?
330 million
Many outside of the US are scratching our heads at all of this, from a first glance surely something that reins in out of control insurers who cause a lot of misery in many cases would be a good thing? It seems things are OK if you are fit and healthy, earning a good wage but so easily it can go wrong, lose a job, develop an ongoing illness and they are scrabbling to weasel out of their obligations.
America does seem a strange country when it comes to its welfare compared to what happens here in the EU where most health is covered through income taxation and less open to corruption and abuses and a guaranteed health for all regardless of class or caste. I would be doubly screwed if I lived over there being mentally and physically disabled and rather glad I live in a socialist welfared country.
Angry Grandparent, I’d like to understand how it works there. Since this is paid for through your taxes, would you say that each of you pays the same amount, or do people who make more money pay more through their taxes (a % of income, higher for higher earners) for the same healthcare? And are there incentives built in, for instance people who do not smoke pay less? Do women pay more than men? Do older people pay more? What about unemployed people? I feel as though I should know the answers to these questions, but I do not.
Its all paid the same rate directly from the income tax pool and there are some restrictions say liver transplants for people who do nothing to give up drinking will be refused until they are dry but it is a service available to every man, woman or child who is a citizen, a citizen of the commonwealth or a citizen of the EU where such care is reciprocated. The lower bracket of tax is 20p in the pound above £13,000 (approx) a year earnings, to go up again you have to be earning a big lot of money to attract the 40/45p in the £ bracket and accountants are adept at making tax bills shrink for their clients. You actually don’t start paying income tax in the UK until you have earned £8145 I think the rate is set.
The standard of care is very good compared to private and going private in many cases other than posh hospitals usually sees the operations done at a NHS hospital making it a bit pointless to have private healthcare really. Medication costs too are capped even for working people, children and the elderly, disabled and unemployed get their medications for free whilst Scotland is abolishing its medication costs altogether, dental and opthalmic care too is available on the state welfare but dentists aren’t regulated as the health service is so can charge depending on circumstances, children and the elderly or disabled again are exempt from most charges here as well.
But this is all under attack, the Tory government and their American insurance friends want to open up the UK market forcing everyone to pay for their own insurance making a lot of money for themselves and their cronies, what the Tories will do is run the NHS into the ground making it seem broken and not worth continuing, they will then offer the voters an incentive to agree to the theft of this national asset, then it will be flogged off to their mates at the lowest possible price, the freebie gifts will have expired and then the money makers will feed on every jack tar here.
for these reasons, obamacare is failing to allow citizens to keep their good medical insurance through no fault of their own. jobs are being lost because of the provisions on employers who then just dont hire new and let go all temporary workers.
candy, you missed reducing hours to less than 30 per week in most cases Significantly cutting income. A very large list of employers here,
http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/092513-669013-obamacare-employer-mandate-a-list-of-cuts-to-work-hours-jobs.htm?fromcampaign=1
It is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. ILLEGAL. And it is destroying millions of lives.
Reducing hours to 30 hours a week. That’s exactly what my company is doing. They cut full time and won’t allow anyone to work over 30 hours unless it’s a special week where they know they will receive more than enough profit. So now full time has become a benefit rather than an option at work. It’s insane.
Look at it as getting a free ‘colonoscopy’ from the feds, without pain meds being used prior to insertion!
So these are the next states to go bankrupt like Michigan then?
thats my thinking.
All they really want is a lot of people to die so we might as well go out fighting! Gonna die anyway.
“1) California: 58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. The first bomb dropped in California with a mass exodus from the most populated state’s Obamacare exchange. Aetna, the country’s largest insurer, left first in July and was closely followed by UnitedHealth. Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of California’s Obamacare exchange forsmall businesses as well.”
CR@P!!!
Why are we almost ALWAYS at the top of the list when it comes to BAD stuff?
COMMIEFORNIA!
The name says it all #1. Ain’t it time to say enough is enough?
🙂
I prefer Crazifornia.
At least it gives some of them a flimsy excuse.
🙂