Late yesterday afternoon President Obama met with insurance commissioners from across the country to go over options as millions of people have seen their health insurance policies cancelled even after President Obama said they could keep them and announced a worthless "fix" last week. That "fix" was Obama saying people who lost their plans can get them back, which is pretty much impossible.
In the meeting, commissioners expressed deep concerns about Obama's "fix, reminding him that insurance companies were complying with his Obamacare law when they sent out cancellation notices and that major systems have been changed to comply with the law, making it extremely difficult to comply with a "fix."
State insurance commissioners told President Barack Obama on Wednesday that his effort to stem a wave of insurance cancellations caused by his signature healthcare law could lead to higher premiums.
Comments after the meeting reflected continued skepticism by some of the commissioners.
In a statement, the group "stressed their concern that different rules for different policies would be detrimental to the overall insurance marketplace and could result in higher premiums for consumers, without addressing the underlying concern of gaps in coverage."
Since the passage of Obama's Affordable Care Act in 2010, "state regulators have been working to ensure that plans are compliant with the new rules. These proposed changes are creating a level of uncertainty that we must work together to alleviate," Jim Donelon, NAIC president and Louisiana insurance commissioner, said in a statement.
"We share the President's goal of affordable coverage for consumers, and we will work with the insurance companies in our states to implement changes that make sense while following our mandate of consumer protection," he said.
So, what is this leading to? A possible bailout for health insurance companies on your dime.
There is a provision in the president’s signature legislation that provides reinsurance subsidies to insurance companies if they lose a certain amount in profits because their pool of policyholders is policyholders is too heavily weighted toward the more-costly unhealthy or elderly people.
It's important to remember that we shouldn't feel sorry for insurance companies that are getting blamed for the Obamacare disaster by the White House. After all, they made their bed back before Obamacare was law and were looking forward to getting billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies as a result of its passage, and now they're laying in it. That being said, their initial support of Obamacare in no way excuses President Obama's efforts to thwart responsibility for the Obamacare disaster, his broken promises and blaming mass loss of health insurance plans on insurance companies that were simply complying with his signature piece of legislation.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio has introduced legislation that would block a bailout for insurance companies.
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