Obamacare would outlaw individual private coverage.

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Looks like Republicans were right when they warned us that Obamacare would take away your private health ins



It's Not An Option
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY * Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332548165656854
 
No, its on page 14, authored by Leahy. The clause would not abolish private care for those already with it, but it would effectively abolish it for those not yet with a private plan...
And make it so you couldn't change plans. It's on page 16 BTW...

Say, if you changed jobs. Carryover coverage would then have to be the public option, and you could no longer enroll in the private option as private insurance companies could not sign you up.
 
And make it so you couldn't change plans. It's on page 16 BTW...

Say, if you changed jobs. Carryover coverage would then have to be the public option, and you could no longer enroll in the private option as private insurance companies could not sign you up.


No, that's not the way it works. At all. Nice fear-mongering though.
 
this is exactly why bills need to be made public so we can actually see what is going into them....am i correct in assuming our information is coming third hand and no one here has read teh text?
 
You guys are doing a good job of proving why the bill shouldn't be made public. You guys will go through it and cherry pick things, quote them out of context, and fearmonger dishonestly until you kill legislation.
 
Here is page 16 of the current version of the bill.


1 SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT
2 COVERAGE.
3 (a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COV4
ERAGE DEFINED.—Subject to the succeeding provisions of
5 this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable cov6
erage under this division, the term ‘‘grandfathered health
7 insurance coverage’’ means individual health insurance
8 coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the
9 first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
10 (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
11 (A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in
12 this paragraph, the individual health insurance
13 issuer offering such coverage does not enroll
14 any individual in such coverage if the first ef15
fective date of coverage is on or after the first
16 day of Y1.
17 (B) DEPENDENT COVERAGE PER18
MITTED.—Subparagraph (A) shall not affect
19 the subsequent enrollment of a dependent of an
20 individual who is covered as of such first day.
21 (2) LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR
22 CONDITIONS.—Subject to paragraph (3) and except
23 as required by law, the issuer does not change any
24 of its terms or conditions, including benefits and
25 cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day be26
fore the first day of Y1.
 
"the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1."

"the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1."


Sounds like you won't be able to change your policy or enroll in a private policy after the gov ones comes into power.

But if someone can post information to the contrary I would be interested to read it.
 
You guys are doing a good job of proving why the bill shouldn't be made public. You guys will go through it and cherry pick things, quote them out of context, and fearmonger dishonestly until you kill legislation.

no stupid....it is out there and if someone is wrong you can correct them...

what logical leap is that....oh because someone might cherry pick ALL UNITED STATES CITIZENS SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO READ BILLS

epic fail
 
"the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1."

"the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1."


Sounds like you won't be able to change your policy or enroll in a private policy after the gov ones comes into power.

But if someone can post information to the contrary I would be interested to read it.


The problem with the theory is that there is no "government one" that "comes into power."
 
The problem with the theory is that there is no "government one" that "comes into power."

Then why would they limit access to other health insurances? Because that is obviously what is said.
 
And make it so you couldn't change plans. It's on page 16 BTW...

Say, if you changed jobs. Carryover coverage would then have to be the public option, and you could no longer enroll in the private option as private insurance companies could not sign you up.

It's obvious, this administration wants to push the private insurers out of business.
 
anything from mediamatters is not Reality at all..

remember folks they are a PROPAGANDA site for the Democrat party..
 
anything from mediamatters is not Reality at all..

remember folks they are a PROPAGANDA site for the Democrat party..

Considering all they do is post videos of your mouthpieces so people can see what they say and hold them accountable for their words, I can see why you'd hate them. You guys HATE facts and reality.
 
Considering all they do is post videos of your mouthpieces so people can see what they say and hold them accountable for their words, I can see why you'd hate them. You guys HATE facts and reality.

how the Fxxk does mediamatters hold anyone accountable.??
anyone can doctor up a video...and MM's is famous for that..
they are a propaganda arm for the Democrat party, Run by the Democrat party..
and all you libs lap it up as you accuse us of doing with Rush..

Heres some fact and reality...learn something before you spew..
Page 16 of the Health Care plan.. Labelled "protecting" your options... - Just Plain Politics!
 
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Considering all they do is post videos of your mouthpieces so people can see what they say and hold them accountable for their words, I can see why you'd hate them. You guys HATE facts and reality.

Neocon parrots don't like to think beyond the what makes them feel good....which is why they avoid any honest analysis or discussion of their talking points. This little ditty would drive them crazy:

The deal is that the actual bill is over 1,000 pages long, it is written in legalese rather than English, and it is set in the middle of a large array of other legislation that it must work around without destroying. This necessarily means that it does some nifty tricks to side-step some of the implications. For example: For employer-provided health insurance meeting requirements for deduction as health care coverage under federal law, federal regulation already applies via ERISA. But private plans (those individually purchased) are regulated by the states under the provisions of the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which places private health insurance under state control.


So the question is how to enforce the mandates upon insurers -- the must-issue and the flat-rate-pool mandates -- without overturning McCarran-Ferguson. Neither Congress nor the majority of states want the Federal government to be in the business of regulating insurance in general. Simply amending McCarran-Ferguson to exclude health insurance as a state-regulated class doesn't work either, because it's not all health insurance that Congress wants to regulate, just primary health insurance. Supplemental policies are of supreme disinterest to Congress and they're quite happy to let the states continue regulating those. Besides, insurers could raise some legal actions if Congress tried to regulate already-issued insurance that was issued under McCarran-Ferguson.


So the solution that the wonk assigned the task of making this happen arrived at was to create a new ERISA-eligible group for all future private insurance to be offered through -- the Health Insurance Exchange. This starts on page 72 of the bill. Since it is an ERISA-eligible group, it can be regulated through ERISA without touching McCarran-Ferguson in general. But then comes the task of how to make all private insurance be offered via the Exchange. And the solution the wonk devised was to outlaw the issue of new private policies that were Exchange-eligible, which is done on page 16, which would force all new private policies to be issued via the ERISA-regulated Exchange rather than via the state-regulated McCarran-Ferguson private market. In short, it's a work-around for McCarran-Ferguson which avoids the necessity to have to actually change McCarran-Ferguson -- existing private insurance policies can still be regulated by the states, it's just that new private insurance that meets primary insurance requirements must go thru the Exchange where it can be regulated under federal ERISA rules instead. And wingnut heads explode upon reaching page 16, and they erupt shouting "ObamaCare outlaws private insurance!" without ever getting to page 72.


This points to a major problem wingnuts have with a 1000+ page bill -- you have to read the whole darn thing to know exactly how page 16 relates to page 72, you have to know the legal background of health insurance beforehand to understand how the pieces relate to the other major pieces of federal regulation like ERISA and McCarran-Ferguson, you have to have basic literacy in the legalese involved in this massive piece of wonkery, and wingnuts lack the patience, background, or the reading comprehension to do this. The bill does not outlaw private insurance, of course. It just shifts its issuance to the Exchange so it can be regulated under ERISA rather than McCarran-Ferguson. But to someone who suffers from legal illiteracy and a case of the paranoids, taking page 16 out of context means you arrive at the erroneous conclusion "ObamaCare outlaws private insurance!", which was boldly published in a national forum without the slightest attempt to validate the conclusion with, well, somebody who knows even the tiniest bit about health insurance regulation and how the new bill interacts with the current regulatory framework.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/16/161814/777
 
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