President Obama announced Thursday that Americans could keep their health care plans for another year even if it has changed since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act or was purchased since then, after millions were informed their current policies are no longer legal under the new law.
Anywhere from 3-5 million Americans have lost coverage as a result of the mandates within Obamacare, but Obama says he is now giving states and insurance companies the freedom to continue policies that don’t comply with federal law.
However, Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner says there are countless problems with Obama reversing course now. First of all, she says, Obama doesn’t have the right to make this change unilaterally.
“What the president is trying to do is once again rewrite the law through administrative fiat. He does not have the authority to do what he says he is going to do,” said Turner, noting that some congressional Democrats facing tough re-election fights next year are still looking to cement these changes through legislation.
She also doesn’t expect insurance companies to jump at this shift in policy because they’ve already made decisions about coverage options in 2014 based on the new law.
“They don’t have a choice. These policies are not legal starting on January 1 of next year because they don’t comply with all of the long list of Obamacare mandates and rules and regulations. The policies aren’t legal,” she said.
“The president today has just waved a magic wand and said, ‘Oh, we’re going to sprinkle some fairy dust and allow those policies to continue,'” said Turner. “I think it’s mostly for show because he’s getting so much heat for this collapse of a law that they really can’t fix. The house of cards is falling apart.”
Completely reworking coverage options in the next weeks would be a herculean task for insurance companies and Turner says part of the reason for today’s announcement is to set up the insurance industry as the fall guy for consumer frustrations going forward.
“They have spent the last three-and-a-half years re-engineering every aspect of the health care system. Companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with this law, to restructure themselves to offer these new policies and exchanges. And now, at the last minute, the president is changing the rules again and saying we’re going to go back,” said Turner.
“That’s not how our system works. You don’t just willy nilly wave a wand and change a law. It has to go through a process,” she said.
Another reason for the administration’s “desperation” is the calendar. Obama refused to reiterate his earlier promise that healthcare.gov would be fully operational by the end of November. If it is not, millions will be in violation of the individual mandate since anyone wanting to be covered come January need to be fully enrolled by December 15. Turner says that’s not going to happen.
“If people aren’t signed up by the fifteenth of December, their coverage can’t start on January 1 if they’ve lost their policy. That means even if everything works well that you have to funnel everybody who’s been trying to sign up, all those paper applications, all the people who are waiting for the website to work, into two weeks. The website does not have the capacity to do that and, by the way, it’s not going to be ready anyway,” said Turner.