Obamacare Website Admits: You May Not Be Able to Keep Your Plan

    On the very day the Obamacare insurance marketplaces opened for business, a new topic appeared on the HealthCare.gov website:

    Although the topic was just added, it is already listed as "most popular":

    The write up on this new topic begins:

Starting 2014, most individual plans must offer new benefits and protections. Some plans will be changed or replaced with plans that offer these protections. 

If this happens, you can choose to buy a plan in the Health Insurance Marketplace instead. If you switch to a Marketplace plan, you may qualify for lower costs based on your income.

    Further down, the post states:

Your plan or choices may change
Given the changes required in 2014, insurance companies offering individual plans have two choices:

• They can make changes to your plan to provide these benefits. If they do, you’ll see these changes to your plan by the time you renew during 2014. For example, if your renewal date is in July 2014, you’ll see the changes no later than July.

• Your insurance company may decide to offer you other individual plans rather than renew the particular plan that you have today.

    While the post says that "insurance companies offering individual plans have two choices," this does not take into account that some insurance companies will simply choose to cancel the plan and not offer any alternatives, as some have already done.
    President Obama and his supporters have been insisting since before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law that if "you like your plan", you can keep it.  Now that the Marketplaces are open, the administration is finally acknowledging that that will not always be the case.
 

Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard under the headline "New Topic on HealthCare.gov: What If My Plan is Not Offered in 2014?" 

HHS Admits: You Might Not Be Able to Keep Your Doctor Under Obamacare

    As the Affordable Care Act was pushed through Congress in 2010, the Obama administration and its allies were unequivocal in two claims about Obamacare: If you like your doctor and you like your current plan, you can keep them.  HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed the president fully in this regard.  The White House went so far as to post a Health Insurance Reform Reality Check on its website where "Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform debunks the myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors."  President Obama upped the ante, putting the promise in the form of a "guarantee":

THE PRESIDENT: Here is a guarantee that I've made. If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor. Nobody is trying to change what works in the system. We are trying to change what doesn't work in the system.

    While there has been sniping back and forth between the administration and its detractors about the real-world application of the Affordable Care Act since its passage, the new Healthcare.gov website has taken some of the mystery out of the controversy.  And President Obama and his administration do not fare well in this latest "reality check".  Among the questions that HHS recently added to the website: "Can I keep my own doctor?":

    "Depending on the plan you choose in the Marketplace, you may be able to keep your current doctor."  The bottom line is that Obamacare guarantees neither. Doctors may be only available through certain networks, just as in the current system.  And only plans that existed in their current form on March 23, 2010, are even eligible to be "kept." The vast majority of plans will be new, subject to a raft of new regulations, requirements, and restrictions.
    Now that Health and Human Services has confirmed that the suspicions of Obamacare opponents were justified, the Obama administration will have some explaining to do to friends and foes of the law alike. Because now everyone is finding out "what's in it."


Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.