President Obama promised us that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Okay, we’ve known that was a lie for some time (and suspected it all along), but it came out today that some people could lose their insurance much sooner than previously thought:
Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this September could strip more than 1 million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama’s reforms.
Under the provision, insurance companies will no longer be able to apply broad annual caps on the amount of money they pay out on health policies. Employer groups say the ban could essentially wipe out a niche insurance market that many part-time workers and retail and restaurant employees have come to rely on.
This market’s limited-benefit plans, also called mini-med plans, are priced low because they can, among other things, restrict the number of covered doctor visits or impose a maximum on insurance payouts in a year. The plans are commonly offered by retail or restaurant companies to low-wage workers who cannot afford more expensive, comprehensive coverage.
Depending on how strictly the administration implements the provision, the ban could in effect outlaw the plans or make them so restrictive that insurance companies would raise rates to the point they become unaffordable.
If the law is applied as written, 1 million people who are currently insured will lose their insurance in September, and most will go uninsured until 2014.
The story, however, leaves open the possibility that the administration might not implement the provision “strictly”. How does that work, when the law requires it? Basically, the administration might not enforce its own bill. And by “might not”, I mean “won’t”. After all, taking away health insurance from 1 million people just two months before an election would spell disaster for Democrats. On the other hand, if they don’t enforce it, who is going to complain? Certainly not Republicans, who opposed provisions such as this in the first place.
But that doesn’t mean that million people are safe. The Democrats have been very consistent about their desire to outlaw payout caps. They might put it off — in violation of their own law — for electoral advantage, but they’re committed to doing it. Expect to see it strictly enforced starting right after the election.
(Via the Corner.)
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