When Barack Obama, floundering in the endless humiliation from the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, gave the country’s insurance companies the “put option” to reject the one-year “cancellation” extension fix stemming from the whole “if you like your plan, you can keep it, period” fiasco, he committed a cardinal sin – he lost control of the situation, because from that point onward the decision was no longer in his court. Furthermore, due to the syndicate nature of insurance companies and state insurance commissioners implementing Obamacare, suddenly the decision was subject to game theoretical facets including cooperation and defection, or rather just defection since at this point the biggest spoils would go to whoever had the initial leverage or rather, defiance of the president. Sure enough, California just flopped on Obama’s most recent flip when the state, moments ago, rejected Obama’s proposed fix to allow legacy plans to survive for one additional year.
- CALIFORNIA REJECTS OBAMA’S INSURANCE CANCELLATION FIX
- CALIFORNIA REJECTS 1-YEAR EXTENSION OF CANCELED INSURANCE PLANS
More from Bloomberg:
California officials implementing President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul rejected a one- year extension of insurance plans that are to be canceled under the law.
The president has urged states to give people with substandard medical plans an additional year to meet the law’s requirements after hundreds of thousands received cancellation notices and were told new policies to meet minimum rules for coverage would cost more. “That’s making the best of not-great options, but I think it’s the best option and then we can focus in the coming months on the enrollment we need,” Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, the health exchange, said today at a meeting in Sacramento.
California’s decision is critical to the roll-out of Obamacare nationwide. The most populous U.S. state, which received almost $1 billion in federal grants to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, led the U.S. in signups last month. The law requires all Americans to be covered next year or pay a penalty.
It’s up to state regulators and insurance companies to decide whether to delay the cancellations, which conflicted with Obama’s promise that consumers who liked their existing plans could keep them.
The exchange said 79,891 Californians had selected a health plan through Covered California as of Nov. 19. Enrollment began Oct. 1.
And from AP:
The board overseeing California’s health insurance exchange has voted to stick with its current approach of phasing out by year’s end health insurance policies that do not meet current benefit requirements. The Covered California Board of Directors voted 5-0 on Thursday to hold steady on its current approach, defying President Barack Obama’s recent flip on one crucial aspect of the Affordable Care Act.
The state insurance commissioner had said that 1.1 million Californians are receiving notices that their current individual health insurance policies will be discontinued in 2014 because they do not meet the benefit requirements of the federal health care overhaul.
That has angered some policy holders, many of whom will see their monthly premiums and deductibles rise sharply with the new plans being offered. It also flies in the face of promises Obama made repeatedly when he said people who liked their current health insurance policies could keep them under his health insurance reforms.
The president has since backtracked and has asked states to allow insurance companies to extend those older policies.
But many insurance companies oppose that, saying doing so would undermine the new markets being set up under Obama’s law. They also said they did not have enough time to rebuild policies they already had discontinued.
And while Calirofnia’s decision certainly makes sense financially for the insolvent state (if not any other more prudent states), it merely adds to Obama’s political crucifixion as now it will appear as if he has lost all control over not just the website enrollment process, but also the entire onboarding process and is unable to even keep beneficiary states under control.
Welcome to socialist central planning 101 – where everything that can go wrong, sooner or later does.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Q4YK1Itn2Xo/story01.htm Tyler Durden