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Heritage
Foundation
Could Obamacare
Cause More
People to LOSE Coverage Than Gain It?
by Chris Jacobs
October 18, 2013
Obamacare’s
supporters
have always claimed that the law will help increase the number of
Americans with health insurance. But an analysis released yesterday
provided persuasive data showing that the number of people losing
coverage under Obamacare could exceed the number of people who gain
it.
Health
insurance industry
expert Robert Laszewski’s updated analysis of Obamacare’s
insurance exchanges included the following nuggets:
The U.S.
individual health
insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because
the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing
plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not
grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal.
The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual
plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased
the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan
has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to
you when it would have renewed in 2014.
These 16
million people are
now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing
their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break
in coverage and comply with the new health law’s benefit
mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be
seeing some pretty big rate increases.
In total,
16 million people
who purchase insurance for themselves could lose their current health
plans on January 1. And that number doesn’t even count the
Americans losing employer-provided health coverage—because their
firms are dropping spousal coverage or dropping coverage for
part-time workers.
Earlier
this year, the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in 2014, Obamacare
would enroll 7 million people in exchange coverage and 9 million
people through Medicaid. (Medicaid’s problems with physician access
and patient outcomes are so widespread that some beneficiaries don’t
consider the program “real insurance,” but that’s a separate
story.) The CBO total of 16 million who will gain coverage is exactly
equal to the 16 million Robert Laszewski estimates will lose their
existing health plans due to Obamacare’s new mandates.
For the
rest of this
article and more, go to Heritage Foundation
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