Almalieque wrote:
Everything prior to the law being approved was grandfathered in. Whether or not you decide to accept it is on you.
Sigh. That's simply not true. I don't know how much more clearly I can explain that this simply is not true. It's not even that "everything" isn't grandfathered in, but "nearly nothing" is because of the way the law is written. But don't take my word for it, let's get the information
from the horses mouth See the problem is that while a plan
could be grandfathered in, only those plans that meet a set of new criteria that were required by Obama care *and* do not require a significant increases in premiums or other costs can be grandfathered. The problem
as we conservatives predicted 3+ years ago is that this is a nearly impossible standard to meet.
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At issue is a so-called “grandfather†clause in the law stating that consumers would have the option of keeping policies in effect as of March 23, 2010, even if they didn’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed after that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.
The grandfather clause more or less exists only in name. It's there so that the Obamcare advocates can point at it and say "but older plans can be grandfathered in!!!" and think that means anything. Again this was something that was quite obvious to anyone who actually bothered to read the law.
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Gbaji wrote:
While I'm sure the insurance companies have made changes to their plans over the last 3 years (just like they do over any given 3 year period of time), this does not change the fact that the Obamacare mandates apply to all plans regardless of when they were first implemented.
False. Read above.
No. True. Read the actual link to the actual healthcare.gov site. Even a grandfathered plan must still meet certain Obamacare requirements. The problem is that they have to somehow magically meet a new set of more expensive requirements without increasing the cost to the consumers. And if they fail to do this then even the small list of things they're allowed to be exempted from no longer apply. The conditions for what can be grandfathered are so narrow as to be more or less meaningless.
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Gbaji wrote:
The entire point of the law is to force healthy people to buy more health coverage than they need so as to subsidize the health costs for less healthy people. It accomplishes this by creating those mandates and forcing the insurance industry to comply. The law cannot work if people could keep their old/cheap health insurance that they liked because it was cheap and only covered the small number of things they needed. That's why the whole "if you like your health coverage, you can keep it " was such an obvious lie from the start. The whole point of the law was to force people off the cheap insurance they were currently buying and into buying more expensive insurance that covered more stuff so that they'd be paying into the pools used to insure people who actually needed that increased coverage.
The law required that people not be able to keep their health insurance. Claiming otherwise really was a blatant lie from day one.
False. The law requires for affordable health care to be available. Whether or not you choose to change is onto you. That is why the insurance companies sent out the letters that they did. As long as they provide the plans, they are good. If you're too ignorant to realize that better plans exist, then that's on you.
Um... You're missing my point. The law can say it's about providing "affordable health care" to consumers, but the way that Obamacare attempts to do that is by putting healthy people into the insurance pools that currently cover sick people. That way the sick people pay less and thus their health care becomes more "affordable". The problem is that in order for this to work, a whole lot of healthy people must purchase health insurance that they don't need. The law accomplishes this in two ways:
1. It sets down mandated coverage levels with which each tier of insurance plan must comply. So folks who might have otherwise chosen to purchase insurance that only covered a small number of things that they really needed (like say a healthy person who's only worried about injuries, but not say ongoing prescription costs) would be required to purchase broader more comprehensive (and more expensive care).
Everyone in this group would have their insurance changed, whether they wanted it to or not. And none of them would meet the requirements to be grandfathered in.
2. It mandates that everyone must buy health insurance. Either their employer must provide it for them or they must purchase it themselves. And any insurance purchased must meet those requirements mentioned above. However, people can choose not to buy health insurance and instead pay a fine. That fine for individuals is $95/year or 1% of your income each year.
This is why I say that the purpose of the law is to force people to change their health insurance. What they're trying to accomplish can't be done without pushing healthy people out of cheap (or no) insurance and onto expensive coverage. That's what the law does. It's also why the grandfather clauses can't be broad enough to actually be used. If they were, then too many people would be able to get their coverage grandfathered, and the law would not work. It's not like they set those requirements so restrictively just because they felt like it. They did so intentionally to ensure that very close to zero people would actually qualify.
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False. You don't have to force people to pay less money for more. If you disagree, pay close attention to Black Fridays. People will oppose ACA because it came from the Democrats, but after a few months of paying significantly more for less, people will eventually get involved.
I honestly have no clue what you're trying to say here. I will simply repeat what I said: Changing the law to actually allow a significant number of people to keep their old insurance plans would effectively "repeal" the law because forcing people off their old plans is the core point of the law itself. I've explained this in what I thought was quite clear language already. Are you really that confused?
Look. If I write a law that attempts to make the cost of big screen TVs lower by forcing everyone in the country to buy a new big screen TV every year (volume, right?), we can debate endlessly whether that will actually result in lower costs down the road (and I'd tend to argue it would have the opposite effect of course), but we should not have to get into an argument over whether the law is going to require that people replace their old TVs with new ones. Again, the whole point of the law is to get people to do precisely that.
And guess what? The entire point of Obamcare is to get people to replace their old insurance plans with the new ones defined in the law. Similarly, we can debate whether that will actually make costs lower or higher, but to deny that this is what the law does, or to lie about it and claim it wont have that effect, is just plain stupid. It's what the law does Alma. Changing that more or less undoes the law itself. If you take the part that forces people to change their health plans to comply with the new standard out of a law that forces people to change their health plans to comply with the new standard, then you basically don't have a law anymore. You've gutted it. You now have a law that says that any plan that happens to already meet the criteria will meet the criteria, but any that doesn't isn't required to. That's like saying that you've set the speed limit to 65mph, but anyone who wants to go faster can, and there's no penalty. Duh. It only works if you force everyone to comply. Remove the compliance and you don't have a law anymore.
Which is the problem the Dems are facing. They've been hit with a massive uproar about this, but they can't actually fix the problem. They just have to keep paying lip service to it and hoping it goes away.
