Focus Shifts From Obamacare Website Problems to Insurance Cancellations

The ad­min­is­tra­tion is on the de­fens­ive this week over Pres­id­ent Obama’s claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” un­der the Af­ford­able Care Act, The Wash­ing­ton Post re­ports.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of in­di­vidu­als have been re­ceiv­ing can­cel­la­tion no­tices from their in­sur­ance com­pan­ies re­cently, a num­ber that NBC News said would grow to mil­lions, in what ap­peared to be a scath­ing in­vest­ig­at­ive re­port this week. “The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has known that for at least three years.”

Yet we’ve all known this for at least three years, Think­Pro­gress poin­ted out in re­sponse, cit­ing an art­icle in The Hill from 2010 that in­cludes the same es­tim­ates of people who could lose their cur­rent in­sur­ance plans.

In­di­vidu­als may keep their “grand­fathered” plans from be­fore March 23, 2010, un­less the plans change sig­ni­fic­antly and do not in­clude pro­tec­tions re­quired un­der the law, such as the 10 es­sen­tial health be­ne­fits, and no dis­crim­in­a­tion against preex­ist­ing con­di­tions or against gender.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tends in­di­vidu­als los­ing their plans will have ac­cess to more com­pre­hens­ive, high­er-qual­ity ones un­der the health care law, of­ten at more af­ford­able costs, when premi­um sub­sidies are factored in. Cen­ters for Medi­care and Medi­caid Ser­vices Ad­min­is­trat­or Mar­ilyn Taven­ner said in a House Ways and Means hear­ing on Tues­day that in­sur­ance can­cel­la­tions have been go­ing on long be­fore the ACA, but now the law in­cludes fur­ther pro­tec­tions for those in­di­vidu­als. The hear­ing fo­cused more on the is­sue of plan can­cel­la­tions than prob­lems with Health­Care.gov. 

The con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the is­sue of can­cel­la­tions has many in a frenzy, as the ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to work to re­pair the web­site and main­tain that cov­er­age will be bet­ter un­der Obama­care. Yet if this ar­gu­ment con­tin­ues to gain trac­tion, a per­ceived broken prom­ise could prove to be more dif­fi­cult to mend than a broken web­site.